Martha Lamont London, United Kingdom

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I am a London-based artist who graduated from City and Guilds with an MA in Fine Art in September 2023. I finished my BA at Wimbledon College of Arts in 2015 where I studied Technical Arts. Since 2018, I dedicated my time to developing my personal practice alongside teaching Fine Art to children and adults. I was part of the Turps Correspondence course before starting my MA this September.

Autobiography inspires my introspective artworks, using the self as a reference mentally and often, physically. I believe that using personal introspective experiences enables me to connect to a viewer whose story may echo my own, posing the question: Is this story solely about the artist? Or am I, the viewer, part of this story too?  My practice spans over large scale figurative paintings, to small intimate canvases, alongside ink and watercolour studies.

Within my paintings, figuration dissolves and reappears through the dilution of pigments with mediums and thinners alongside layers of glazes, contrasted with areas of opacity and definition. The blurred boundaries between forms reflects the slippage between reality and imagination within our minds.

My fantastical worlds are imagined and metaphorical, often resulting in compositions that are idiosyncratic, symbolising the strange, contradictory nature of the mind. The environments I depict contain loose, ambiguous representations of nature, where growth acts as a symbol. These are represented through microbiology and botanic imagery alongside painterly effects that corrode the surfaces of the macroscopic spaces. This suggests the activity of microscopic organisms- parasites that can appear to create landscapes that can feel bodily and flesh-like.

Moments of highly personal symbolism reveal themselves as a painting is made, both through the alchemy of the paint and the depicted motifs- for example, the paper boat, which for me represents endurance, discipline and growth. A handmade symbol of hope and wisdom for the choices that shape one’s life.