ArtistMartin, Percy

Artist Years1943-living

Artist NationalityAmerican

TitleSerpent Woman

Year1981

MediumPrint > Aquatint Etching

DimensionsPlate: 8.7 X 13.1 inches

ProvenancePurchased from the artist, 1972

Accession Number927655

NotesPercy Martin is an African-American artist based in Washington, DC. He has created a vast personal mythology of interrelated characters that are depicted in his prints and drawings. The mythology, which informs much of his work, "comes from reading and listening to people telling me that we as a group, as Black Americans, has never done anything. They also attack where we came from." Martin did research on mythology and found that many myths are universal, ". . . and a lot of the stories could be traced back to Africa. But when I started using myth so many people would say to me, 'No, no, no! You didn't get this just right – this little part, you didn't get it right.' So I decided to create my own mythology – a personal mythology."

This mythology is important because it asks the viewer, the artist, and the art to unite in a common imagining. We are not often invited to dream our own pasts or alternate presents, and Percy Martin's ability to take us with him on his dream journeys through a shared land opens our eyes to the possibilities of inventing our realities. It is a major accomplishment that Martin has found a way to include us in his amazing visions of another world, inviting our observations and interpretations so that the work becomes part of our own versions of mythology and inspires us to know ourselves in other dimensions.

Martin works primarily with several different types of printmaking, including relief, intaglio, lithography, and monoprinting. Two color drawings are also included in this exhibit, which contains work from the past decade.
(source: The Washington Post, 5/17/1989)

Martin was born in Danville, Virginia and grew up in Washington, DC. He received a double diploma in advertising design and printmaking from the Corcoran School of Art and has taught at the Corcoran Gallery's outreach program, Lorton Prison, the Duke Ellington School of Arts, and The Sidwell Friends School, where he currently teaches.

Percy Martin's work can be seen in the Washington Print Club Collection of Georgetown University's Special Collection of Fine Prints. A show of his work is currently on display in the Daryl Reich Rubenstein Gallery at The Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC.

Price $950.00

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