CranberryCloud Laurel Martin
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Printmaking
  • Mixed Media
  • Shop
  • Links

Little Abstracts

4/30/2019

0 Comments

 
Lately I've been doing lots of little abstracts.  I made a series of linocut stamps so that I could play around with the colours and shapes.  The small size lets me experiment with out too much of a time and ink commitment.  I've always been fascinated by abstract, but never known where to start and this is a way in.  It's also interesting to see which ones resonate with which people.  Some of these are available at the  Georgina Art Centre and Gallery
0 Comments

My Grandmother's Piano

4/10/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Piano is a reduction print of my Grandmother's piano. I was very worried about the fate of this piano while I was making the print.  I needed to find it and my mother's other piano and organ.  Looking on Kijiji, I saw that there were many free piano's that no one seemed interested in.  No one has time or space for pianos anymore and it's so sad.  One of the construction people working on my Mom's house said he had no trouble getting rid of them, he loved breaking them up.  That sent a chill down my spine.  I was so happy when a TV production company called and said they would take all three.  If you watch the show Condor, with William Hurt, you might see one of them.  

This print has a lot of personal symbolism in it.  It's difficult for me to be objective about it so I just put it out into the world...like the pianos.  

​It's for sale in my Etsy store.


0 Comments

Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions ~ Yves Klein

12/5/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
This print started off as a reaction to all those prepackaged snacks you can get at the grocery store.  I know it's hard to get kids to eat.  If I sent an apple in my kids lunch it would come home whole and bruised.  But I probably worried too much about getting them to eat.  Anyways they survived childhood and I think there is too much packaging and fruit comes packed in it's own skin.  Aside from the fruit theme there is ultramarine blue. What is it about this colour?  I become totally transfixed by it and I'm not the only one. Yves Klein summed it up nicely in the quote above.   Originally made from Lapis Lazuli 

0 Comments

September; A new start.

9/10/2018

1 Comment

 
Lately I've noticed that I've been feeling a little sad.  There are lots of reasons for that but personal and the whole state of the world.  I realized that life is short and I can't put printmaking on the back burner while I deal with other things.  It's one of my favorite reasons for living.  So today I started a new print with ultramarine blue, my favorite colour...well one of my favorites.  It fell so good to be printing again!
Picture
Here are a few more prints that I've added added to my printmaking page.
1 Comment

May to November

11/15/2017

0 Comments

 
Many things happened from May to November, but blogging wasn’t one of them. This is largely because my old computer is so slow, I can hardly stand to use it. It’s not too bad at photo editing or etsy, but blogging would be faster if I engraved a stone with a chisel. Luckily I have become one of the last people on the planet to have an IPad and I have finally figured out how to use it. So onward and upward.
Picture
Early summer saw the arrival of my new press from the Portable Printing Press Co. You can find them on FaceBook. It’s way more exciting than the IPad. Sorry Apple. With it I’ve done several new prints!
Picture
Picture
In October I took a LetterPress course at Open Studio. Combining letterpress and linocut is something I hope to do more of.
Now the days are short and 2017 is coming to a close. This year I’m more organized than usual and I have printed these Christmas cards!
Picture
Merry Merry to everyone and may your darkness be full of twinkling lights!
0 Comments

New Work, New Exhibition!

3/10/2017

0 Comments

 
Saturday May 13th is the opening reception for Imprints; a new exhibition I am having with my printmaking friend Sarka Buchl Stephenson at the Georgina Art Centre and Gallery. I've been in hiding, not posting much or putting prints in my Etsy store in order to get ready for this exhibition.  But the date is fast approaching and I have just heard that I am going to be doing a short TV segment for the show Georgina Life on Rogers TV.  Our exhibition is about printmaking and so I'm hoping to demonstrate a linocut on Georgina Life.  I've been told there are lots of people who don't know what a  linocut is.  My Facebook feed is full of the beautiful work of other linocut artist because I belong to a group called Linocut Friends.  This gives me the mistaken impression that just about everyone is a linocut artist!  Apparently it isn't so.  So I shall rally my courage and do the TV segment on Georgina Life.  I believe it's airing live on Monday morning at 10:00 if you are local.  If not I'll try and get a copy of the segment and show it here.
Here's a sneak peek at some new work for Imprints!
0 Comments

High Flyers

7/6/2016

2 Comments

 
Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Sometimes things happen in life that knock you out of the sky.  Your going round and round in your daily rat race,  perhaps happily, perhaps not, and then boom.  Something happens and life will never be the same.  I made this print several months ago before my sister passed away.  I looked at it last week and I could not remember anything about what I was thinking when I made it.  What is it about?  I know it's based on a vintage toy of an amusement park ride called High Flyers. I know I tend to go round and round, in the school bus I drive and in my head.  Then I remembered the poem above by W. H. Auden.  My daughter read it at my sister's funeral.  It sums up the strangeness of re-entering life which went on around you while you were immersed in tragedy.  And it mentions  Icarus; a "high flyer" who fell from the sky.  There are so many ways to put this together.  Perhaps I am more aware now that everyone goes round and round and we do fall from the sky...and life goes on.
Picture
2 Comments

The Roll-Abodes

2/24/2016

0 Comments

 

... it all looks like a home but you're rushing on wheels...in a sense life is like that...a race towards oblivion while trying to find a home...we feel at home in our lives but it's a very ephemeral experience.​
​                                                              Yann Martel

Picture
For quite some time I've been doodling houses on wheels.  I call them the roll-abodes.  I try not to think too much about what I'm doodling.  I like to see what comes out.  Sometimes, after I'm done I look back and wonder why I'm drawing these houses on wheels.  It's like having a dream that you remember and wonder, "what the heck was that all about?"  Maybe something, maybe nothing.  If you believe that the subconscious is expressed through symbols that emerge in your dreams, it's worth thinking about.  My latest two linocuts prints are of roll-abodes.  There is a multi colour reduction print and a simple black and white one.

I'm trying to find a balance between movement and messiness: to be neat but not stiff.  It's a challenge with linocut.

And what are the roll-abodes?  I think Yann Martel said it best.  That's why he's the writer and I'm not.  I've just started his new book, The High Mountains of Portugal and it's amazing!  I hope to read it many times.

Picture
0 Comments

Christmas is Coming!

11/27/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Do you ever create something and then turn around and see that someone else has already done it and done it better.  That's what happened with this Christmas card.  I'd just finished printing my cards when what to I see on Pinterest but a print by an artist I'd never heard of before; Sadao Watanabe.
Picture
His work is amazing!  I love this sixties stylizing aesthetic.  It reminds me a little of  Osborn and Woods or Sister Corita Kent.  Every time I find an artist with this style I go nuts!  I'm inspired to do better, but I'm not redoing my Christmas cards.  These will do for this year.
Picture
I also have a new studio companion.  I think she will fit in just fine : )
Picture
0 Comments

The Traveller

11/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Traveller is my latest reduction print.  I feel like things are finally coming together;  I'm much more familiar with the ways of my bottle jack press, my Caligo Safe Wash ink is behaving itself and I have been able to tear myself away from renovating.  The  thing about doing renovations yourself is that you are always seeing other little projects that need doing.  I have to ignore those projects because I'm not going to look back on my life and say, "I'm so glad I spent all that time fixing my soffits."

The Loon is a much more worthy preoccupation.  The Loon is a diver and water is a symbol of dreams and multiple states of consciousness.  No one who hears a loon cry on a misty lake can but be affected by this spirit of the north and feel that there is more to life than what we see on the surface.

I called this print "The Traveller" because of the little loon chick who rides on her mother's back.  We are all travellers in a way.  I kept thinking of this print as "Loon in the Lune".  Hahaha.  But it's not a "Lune",  it's the morning sun.  Which is good because "Loon in the Lune"  is a very silly name!

This print will soon be available in my Etsy store,  The Georgina Art Centre and hopefully the proof at Open Studio's Artist Proof sale.
0 Comments
<<Previous
    Picture
    Share

    cranberrycloud@gmail.com

    Follow Me on Pinterest
    Picture

    © Laurel Martin 2010
    Please do not reproduce any of my art without my permission.
    Thank-you!

    Archives

    April 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    November 2017
    March 2017
    July 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.