April Martin · Purple Inkwell Studios
The Portfolio Ledger
Drawn lines, worked surfaces, imagined worlds and moments caught by the camera. A record of what I have made, and what I keep looking for.
The Body of Work
Nine Collections
Traditional Pen & Ink
Ink gives nothing back without a fight. Each hatch and broken line is a decision; together they become weather, bone, fabric, a silence heavy enough to stand in. These drawings carry their making on the surface, including the wrong turns.
Alchemy of Color
Color gets under the skin before the mind finds a name for it. I use it to change the temperature of a scene, to make the familiar grow suspicious, or to leave something luminous in the wreckage.
Relics of Surface
Wax traps things. Fibers snag. Pigment settles into cuts and scrapes. These works have been pushed, sanded, stained, and made to remember the hand that altered them.
The Witness
The camera isn't innocent. A person can look straight into the lens and still be somewhere else entirely. I wait for the moment when the pose goes slack and a private thought finds its way into the light.
Mythic Portraiture
A portrait can turn into a fable without surrendering the person inside it. These photographs borrow from ritual, costume, and old stories, then ask what happens when myth has to live in an ordinary body.
Plastic Mythologies
Cheap plastic can hold an entire childhood hostage. Candy colors, factory shine, little objects sold as happiness: I photograph the things we've been taught to love and listen for what starts to rattle underneath.
Ghost Impressions
No camera. Just things pressed close enough to light to leave an afterimage. Wire, shells, hands, and botanical scraps appear like evidence from a vanished room. There is a kind of violence in how gently they disappear.
Only a Picture Remains
An image can outlive the thing it claims to remember. These staged photographs circle confinement, distance, and the uneasy business of being watched. Something has happened in each frame; the evidence is incomplete.
The Human Moment
The moments between the poses. Quiet gestures, unguarded expressions, and the small human details that stay with us long after the celebration.