Heather Gwen Martin, Ghost Dance

Heather Gwen Martin

Ghost Dance

3 color screenprint over relief printed flat on Magnani Pescia

Price range: $2,000 through $2,365

In Ghost Dance, deep blue and green forms drift upward from the smallest blue shape at the base of the composition, growing and expanding as they rise. Like wisps of smoke from a cold fire, they creep toward the edges of the frame.

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Year
2023
Edition of
20
Dimensions
Paper: 24.5 x 20.75 inches
Image: 17.75 x 14.75 inches
Authentication

Signed, numbered, and dated on the front by the artist. All Haystack editions come with a Certificate of Authenticity.

About the Artwork

In Ghost Dance, deep blue and green forms drift upward from the smallest blue shape at the base of the composition, growing and expanding as they rise. Like wisps of smoke from a cold fire, they creep toward the edges of the frame. Spindle-like forms reach toward one another in a tantalizing, almost gravitational embrace.

Ghost Dance is part of Heather Gwen Martin’s first foray into printmaking, created in close collaboration with master printer Phil Sanders at PS Marlowe Studios in Asheville, North Carolina.

Curator's Note

There is something both elemental and elusive about Ghost Dance. The forms do not simply occupy the composition. They move through it, drifting upward from a single small blue shape at the base, expanding and reaching as they rise, as though pulled by a force that exists just beyond the frame. Heather Gwen Martin has spoken of thinking of forces moving in and out of space as she works, some at lightning speed, others at a glacial pace. In Ghost Dance, that quality of suspended, directional energy is at its most visible.

The palette is cool and interior. Deep blues and greens carry a temperature that is almost physical. The spindle forms reaching toward one another suggest connection without resolution, an embrace that is perpetually in motion, never quite arrived. It is a composition that rewards slow looking, which is precisely what Martin intends. In living with the work, she has observed, there is occasion for it to reveal itself in different ways over time. Ghost Dance is exactly that kind of work.

About the Artist

A black and white portrait of artist Heather Gwen Martin

Heather Gwen Martin (b.1977, Saskatoon, Canada) is a painter based in Los Angeles who is interested in the human aspect of painting. The colors are hot and bright, nearing hard edge abstraction while maintaining the mark of the hand.  Each shape is poetic, with flourishes of elegant movement akin to dancing.

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