Sunday Evening Art Gallery — Delita Martin

Delita Martin (b. 1972, Conroe, Texas) creates large-scale prints onto which she draws, sews, collages, and paints.

Martin claims space for her subjects, particularly black women, creating a powerful presence that simultaneously highlights the historical absence of black bodies in Western art.Through her work, Martin aims to create a new iconography for African Americans based on African tradition, personal recollections, and physical materials.A recurring theme throughout Martin’s work is exploring interconnections between past and present generations.She conveys these connections through symbols such as circles, a shape representative of the moon and symbolic of the female, and birds, which represent the human spirit.

Masks, inspired by the Sowei and Ife masks of West Africa, appear in many of Martin’s works, signifying transition between this world and the spirit world.

Expertly layering all of these elements, Martin visualizes the liminal space between the physical and spiritual worlds.More of Delita Martin‘s marvelous paintings can be found at https://blackboxpressstudio.com/ and https://nmwa.org/press/delita-martins-large-scale-portraits-create-new-iconography-african/.