Lily Mae Martin isn’t an artist who is about making pretty things. In her newest exhibition, Drawing, All the Time, women hide their faces under a blanket of hair as they twist and contort their naked bodies. Each artwork is as much about the subject as it is the way we perceive it.
“I wanted to create some sort of ambiguity to it…and I didn’t want it to be about portraiture,” Lily Mae Martin says confessing that with the faces exposed people often were more concerned with who it was.
“I cover the face a lot because the work is about hair as well. And the politics about hair,” she adds. “Women are complex beings, we can be absurd as well. All these things that you don’t normally attribute to women in media. It’s just I feel like there is still such a problematic way of what we view is female or women.”
For some it might be a polarising subject, but for the few who may find the piece an unnecessary tool for political commentary (which hasn’t happened for Lily) the need to have these conversations far outweighs any negatives.
“I really struggled with it all of my life. I’m 33 now and I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m into challenging it,” she says. “In my early 20s I was really worried that my thoughts and feelings were feminist, but now I’m like whatever, this stuff needs to be talked about.”
Recently moving to regional Victoria, near Ballarat, the artist has reaped the rewards of living in a thriving, creative community. Fittingly, the title of her exhibition is a result of how inspired she has found her time living rurally.
“We’ve moved around a lot but only big cities and if you haven’t had the experience of living further out you don’t know that there’s different ways to do things,” she says. “When we moved out it was definitely the key change I needed and I’ve been making so much work – I’ve almost got too much inspiration.”
Her inspiration is aided daily through her regular practice of general art skills. Often her daughter and cat become the subjects of quick sketches but as she says, “they’re the hardest things to draw because they move around so much”.
What also arose from upkeep of her art skills, was a series based around eight years of self portraits – which is another pertinent skill in the art world.
“I find it really important just to keep up practices that were drilled into us at uni, but when you’re out of uni no one tells you to keep up that stuff as well,” Lily says.
Also with a series of landscape works added to her self portraits and nudes, each work is a complex creation – whether due to its meaning or the pure talent exhibited.
“I think with most images there’s a lot going on and that’s part of the magic of them,” she says.
“When it comes to making art you just have to be really okay with making failures and there are a lot more failures than there are successes, and that tends to stop people and make them very cautious.”
Lily Mae Martin is represented by Scott Livesey Galleries and has been acknowledged Australia-wide, with a piece in the JADA Drawing Prize. Her exhibition, Drawing, All the Time, runs at the Ararat Regional Art Gallery until October 30. The Regional Artist Drawing all the Time
Written by Amanda Sherring
Lily Mae Martin isn’t an artist who is about making pretty things. In her newest exhibition, Drawing, All the Time, women hide their faces under a blanket of hair as they twist and contort their naked bodies. Each artwork is as much about the subject as it is the way we perceive it.
“I wanted to create some sort of ambiguity to it…and I didn’t want it to be about portraiture,” Lily Mae Martin says confessing that with the faces exposed people often were more concerned with who it was.
“I cover the face a lot because the work is about hair as well. And the politics about hair,” she adds. “Women are complex beings, we can be absurd as well. All these things that you don’t normally attribute to women in media. It’s just I feel like there is still such a problematic way of what we view is female or women.”
For some it might be a polarising subject, but for the few who may find the piece an unnecessary tool for political commentary (which hasn’t happened for Lily) the need to have these conversations far outweighs any negatives.
“I really struggled with it all of my life. I’m 33 now and I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m into challenging it,” she says. “In my early 20s I was really worried that my thoughts and feelings were feminist, but now I’m like whatever, this stuff needs to be talked about.”
Recently moving to regional Victoria, near Ballarat, the artist has reaped the rewards of living in a thriving, creative community. Fittingly, the title of her exhibition is a result of how inspired she has found her time living rurally.
“We’ve moved around a lot but only big cities and if you haven’t had the experience of living further out you don’t know that there’s different ways to do things,” she says. “When we moved out it was definitely the key change I needed and I’ve been making so much work – I’ve almost got too much inspiration.”
Her inspiration is aided daily through her regular practice of general art skills. Often her daughter and cat become the subjects of quick sketches but as she says, “they’re the hardest things to draw because they move around so much”.
What also arose from upkeep of her art skills, was a series based around eight years of self portraits – which is another pertinent skill in the art world.
“I find it really important just to keep up practices that were drilled into us at uni, but when you’re out of uni no one tells you to keep up that stuff as well,” Lily says.
Also with a series of landscape works added to her self portraits and nudes, each work is a complex creation – whether due to its meaning or the pure talent exhibited.
“I think with most images there’s a lot going on and that’s part of the magic of them,” she says.
“When it comes to making art you just have to be really okay with making failures and there are a lot more failures than there are successes, and that tends to stop people and make them very cautious.”
Lily Mae Martin is represented by Scott Livesey Galleries and has been acknowledged Australia-wide, with a piece in the JADA Drawing Prize.
Her exhibition, Drawing, All the Time, runs at the Ararat Regional Art Gallery until October 30.
Written by Amanda Sherring