Heather Gwen Martin, Welcome Stranger

Heather Gwen Martin

Welcome Stranger

2 color screenprint over relief printed flat on Magnani Pescia

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

In Welcome Stranger, a spindly form winds in from the side of the composition, its fan-like crown opening toward a green form as it enters the frame. The title bestows a simple narrative on what is otherwise a quietly abstracted encounter.

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Year
2023
Edition of
20
Dimensions
Paper: 22.25 x 23.5 inches
Image: 15 x 17.5 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 Welcome Stranger, a spindly form winds in from the side of the composition, its fan-like crown opening toward a green form as it enters the frame. The title bestows a simple narrative on what is otherwise a quietly abstracted encounter. With only three colors, Martin creates an entire landscape, airy and open, where two forms meet in a gesture that feels at once tentative and warm.

Welcome Stranger 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

Welcome Stranger gives a simple narrative to a composition that might otherwise resist one, transforming an abstract encounter between two forms into something legible, even tender.

With only three colors, Martin constructs an entire world. The palette is light and airy, the composition spacious, the mood one of open possibility rather than tension. It is among the most quietly optimistic works in her Haystack series, and perhaps the most immediately accessible. As Martin has observed, so much can open up and shift with time when living with a work. Welcome Stranger begins that invitation from the very first look.

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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