Meet the Artist - Mandy Martin

I’ve always loved drawing and making things since being a kid. I can find inspiration everywhere, but the power of nature and our human existence and experience within it, is my primary source of inspiration. Other artists and designers are also a great source of inspiration. I’ve worked in the creative industry since I left university in 1994 as a Graphic Designer and Art Director, so I’m used to the process of working with briefs and I adopt a similar approach with my artmaking, my starting point could be lots of play, but I always work this through and create a brief for myself to ensure that a piece of work has meaning and context, it’s also quite critical to make sure a series of work is coherent.

Primarily I work in printmaking. Usually drawing and playing with collage before considering which print process may suit the work. Sometimes I begin playing with print and allow the process to lead me. I also founded a brand called Judily Designs which sells art prints and paper and textile products, inspired by plants. The art is mostly created through lino and screen printing. I often scan in lino prints and resize the image and screen print these onto handmade products such as notebooks, and tea towels.

My primary school head teacher was a real champion of the arts, and I have a vivid memory of him sitting with me whilst we painted volcanos at easels. We spent lots of time drawing and painting back then. My teacher told the class that I would have my work in a museum, I was very shy and felt uncomfortable with the attention, but inside I was cheering myself on, even though I didn’t know what a museum was. My parents were very practical people, always making and repairing things, they were eager to pass on their knowledge and skills but I’m not sure my siblings and I were very good students. My mum used to give me leftovers from her sewing projects, and I would make socks for our dog and clothes for my dolls.

I admire lots of artists and feel moved by lots of diverse artworks. I’ll try to just pick a few, but I might get carried away. I had excellent art history tutors on my foundation and degree course, it was a revelation to learn how to analyse artwork and film, it changed my whole perspective on life. I remember being so moved by Sue Coe’s violent imagery protesting about animal cruelty, I found it profoundly uncomfortable and powerful I’d not realised that art could be used for activism. The fact that she was female, still alive in the middle of her career, was exciting, I’d only learnt about dead artists before and most of them were men. I admired that Sue Coe was so passionate about her cause and that she had the drive and confidence to make such graphic and challenging work.

I also admire the work of some modernist photographers, such as Edward Weston’s black and white photos of plants and natural textures, I loved the high contrast and abstract compositions he created from the human form. I was also drawn to the isolated plants of Karl Blossfeldt. He also used abstraction with a strong black and white graphic element. Man Rays’ Solarisation and Photograms were fun, often accidental and experimental, I liked that they could be soft and ethereal or bold and graphic. I loved the absolute belief he had in his quote that ‘painting is dead’ when he moved into photography. I think these photographers have influenced the lino prints that I create for Judily Designs where I’ve isolated a plant form it’s natural surroundings and zoomed in to a detail or unusual angle.

 Whilst working at a publishing company in London, I came across a book by Cepe Pineles, her story was truly inspiring. Throughout my design career I’d not really thought about it much, but most of the senior art directors were men. This Austrian born woman, Cepe Pineles emigrated to New York and became America’s first independent female graphic designer. She pioneered bringing fine artists to magazines and was the first women invited to The Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. She was a trail blazer who paved the way for women in design, illustration & publishing. This really resonated with me, I’d been consistently told at interviews that I was more of an illustrator than a designer or more of a designer than an illustrator, I was so confused that you had to be either or and now I could see that you didn’t have to be, It was validating, I could continue to make images and design, which I did.

 Once I began taking printmaking more seriously, I began to look closer at the prints of Hockney, Picasso, Matisse, Braque, the Arts and Crafts movement, Hap Grieshaber, German Expressionist woodcuts and Japanese printmaking. I began visiting print exhibitions and fairs where I was excited to see textile designers such as Althea McNish and Shirley Craven, Jake Garfield, Peter Green, Ange Lewin, Mark Hearld and Norman Ackroyd. Haha, I think I should stop now, but I could go on and on, I basically admire so many artists and have been inspired by so many artworks.

I admire the Impressionist movement, their painting is beautiful, the colour, the focus on nature, the sensory element, it creates a serene, cheerful calmness within me. I also admire the Expressionist movement, the jarring colours, dynamic compositions and graphic marks creating raw angry emotions, maybe this is what Sue Coe was channelling when she made her work. I think I’m attracted to the ying and yang of styles. My design work has been heavily influenced by modern design, Bauhaus, and international Swiss design.

My degree was in Graphic Arts at Leeds Met, after this I moved to London and worked as a junior designer for a various small design companies before becoming Art Director at Time Out guides. I believe there’s an element of self-learning involved in most careers, my initial learning curve was learning typography and using computers, as we didn’t have them at university. I was totally immersed in art & design in London and had taken for granted the creative and culturally rich life I had. Moving to Bolton in 2005 was a real culture shock, I did feel cut off and adrift for quite a while. Shortly after and in response to the recession, I retrained to teach, it was exciting to be in education again and surrounded by creative people, but I found high school teaching too intense and only lasted about five years. However the experience did reignite my passion for analogue art making and I began printmaking again, which led me to a three-year course at Hot Bed Press in Salford. This is a fantastic space dedicated to all things printmaking and filled with a lovely creative community, which I find very exciting and full of opportunities.

I would love to try oil painting, I don’t know what’s holding me back, why I haven’t got stuck in yet!