Dante's Bubble: Restless Fury

Sandra Martinez 2022

First Edition of 50 Archival Pigment Prints

Virgil and Dante share a protective bubble facing Chaos in the altered Gustav Doré illustrations by artist Sandra Martinez. Deemed too dark to contemplate pre-COVID, the gifted, 1960s Dante's inferno manuscript proved prescient. Often using antique book pages and manuscripts as her blank canvas, Dante's inferno marks. The first time the artist worked over illustrations instead of text.

" By chance, I had the inferno pages when I arrived in February 2020 for my 3-month painting retreat in Dixon. I never dreamed that the visual content so hard for me to embrace earlier would be such a potent path... Or that I would stay. I was lucky to share a bubble, to be held when so many were supremely alone. The imagery of two figures hanging on to each other, surrounded by agony gave me a place to lay down my fears and paint" SM

Sandra's painting materials include semi-ink, acrylic, washes, dirt, ash, pastels, pencils, and recycled fragments of earlier works. Joshua washes with a minimum palette build up in her work. Some areas are rubbed, erased, cut, collaged, or laden with dirt. The resulting services range from sparse to thick ."

“I thrive on simple, accessible materials. I want to feel no pressure from cost. Elemental like clay, I can bust them down and reuse any portion- removing barriers to flow. Old books have a lot of pages." SM

19 x 13”

Packed in mylar and foamcore backed