Martin Thompson
Martin Thompson is a participant at Vincents Workshop in Wellington. His artwork featured at the Amercian Folk Art Museum in New York from September 2005 to March 2006.
Martin’s work is an optical treasure trove of meticulously crafted single-colour drawings, created using mathematical equations with fractions and decimals on graph paper. After creating one piece he then creates an exact opposite image. He often cuts the squares out, redrawing and refitting with Scotch tape to correct any errors. All of Martin’s work is painstakingly hand done with no help from a computer. Martin’s work was included at the New York American Folk Art Museum’s exhibition titled Obsessive Drawing from September 2005 to March 2006. “The work of Martin Thompson, a street artist from Wellington, New Zealand, is based on mathematical calculation. He draws intricate, digital-looking patterns on graph paper by filling in individual squares with colored ink. He then hand-copies the design, square by square, onto a second sheet of paper, but in reverse, from positive to negative. This emphasis on the laborious performances of repetitive sequences is reminiscent of certain conceptual art of the 1960's and 70's. But Mr. Thompson's physical immersion in his work, which extends to making surgically precise cut-and-paste corrections, connects the realm of detached ideas to that of extreme handcrafting.” New York Times, September 16, 2005
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