Delita Martin

Your work powerfully centers Black women as spiritual, historical, and contemporary subjects. When you begin a new piece, what guides your initial vision—the sitter, the materials, or the story you want to tell?

DELITA MARTIN: When I begin a new piece, I can't really say one individual thing guides me. it's usually the story and the emotional urgency behind it that leads. Sometimes a sitter appears clearly in my mind; other times the materials call first. Ultimately, the work unfolds where story, material, and spirit meet.

You've described your process as one of layering—printmaking, drawing, stitching, and collage. How does this physical layering mirror the emotional or ancestral layers you're exploring?

DM: The physical layering mirrors the way ancestry and history lives in the body—nothing is singular or flat. Printmaking, drawing, stitching, and collage allow me to build history the way it's actually experienced: accumulated, interrupted, repaired, and carried forward.

Circles, birds, and masks recur throughout your work as symbolic language. How did these symbols first enter your visual vocabulary, and how have their meanings evolved over time?

DM: Those symbols entered my work intuitively, long before I fully understood them. Growing up my grandmother would tell me stories about a woman who lived in the moon, so over time, circles became a symbol of the feminine presence, representing the female. Birds represent the human soul, its transition and freedom, and masks about survival and transformation. Their meanings deepen as my understanding of myself deepens.

Quilting and stitching, learned from your grandmother, play a central role in your practice. How do these inherited domestic traditions function as both memory and resistance in your work?

DM: Quilting and stitching are acts of remembering and holding together. The fabrics used by my grandmother were not store bought. They were hand-me-down clothing and other materials. But what I think was important was that every time she touched a piece of fabric she would tell me the story of its origin. So I learned early on that object can hold memory. They carry the labor, care, and ingenuity of people who made beauty under constraint. In my work, those traditions insist on visibility and honor what was once dismissed as domestic or marginal.

Your portraits often feel like they exist between worlds—physical and spiritual. How do you understand or define that liminal space in your own life and practice?

DM: That liminal space is where I live creatively. It's the place between the seen and unseen, where memory, spirit, and present experience overlap. In fact I think we all exist in this place but as we grow older society teaches us to dismiss what we feel and sometimes see. I think of it as a listening space—one that allows ancestral voices to surface. So I ask myself how do you make the intangible tangible, and for me it came through as color, pattern, texture, and layering.

Much of your work reconstructs narratives historically fragmented by slavery and erasure. What does reclamation look like for you—visually and spiritually?

DM: Reclamation, for me, is both visual and spiritual. It means repairing fragmentation by assembling images that assert presence, dignity, and continuity. It's about restoring what was interrupted, not pretending the interruption never happened.

As a master printer and draftswoman, you bring deep technical rigor to emotionally resonant work. How do discipline and intuition balance one another in your practice?

DM: Discipline gives intuition a structure to move through. Printmaking demands rigor and patience, which grounds the emotional weight of the work. That balance allows me to be both precise and open.

Your recent exhibitions, including Calling Down the Spirits and Her Temple of Everyday Familiars, suggest ritual, invocation, and reverence. What role does ritual—formal or intuitive—play in your studio practice?

DM: Ritual is central to my studio practice, often intuitive rather than formal. Repetition, preparation of materials, and quiet attention become acts of invocation. Making itself is a form of reverence.

The theme considers sacred memory as something passed down, sometimes unconsciously. How do memory, intuition, or even dreams enter your creative process?

DM: Memory and intuition enter my process constantly, sometimes through dreams or fragments that surface unexpectedly. I trust those moments as guidance rather than coincidence—they're often where the work begins to speak back to me.

You've spoken about creating a new iconography for Black women. What responsibilities come with reimagining icons that have historically been denied or distorted?

DM: Reimagining iconography for Black women comes with deep responsibility. I'm mindful of not replacing one limitation with another. These figures must be complex, sovereign, and self-possessed—allowed to exist beyond explanation or consumption.

Blue is a recurring color in your work, which you associate with spirituality. Can you talk about how color functions as an emotional or metaphysical force in your compositions?

DM: Color—especially blue—functions as an emotional and spiritual frequency. Blue holds grief, protection, depth, and transcendence for me. It's not decorative; it's a conduit that helps guide the viewer into the interior life of the figure.

Teaching has been part of your journey alongside studio practice. How has mentorship—both giving and receiving—shaped your understanding of legacy?

DM: Mentorship has clarified legacy for me as an active exchange. Teaching reminds me that knowledge is meant to circulate, not be hoarded. What I give returns transformed through others.

Looking back across your career, from early works to recent retrospectives, what feels most transformed in your relationship to your own voice?

DM: What's transformed most is my trust in my own voice. Earlier in my career, I was trying to fit inside boxes. As a printmaker, I was supposed to only make prints; as a painter, I was only supposed to make paintings. But once I gave myself permission to be the artist I needed to be, I began to understand that clarity comes from commitment and self-permission.

Your sitters often meet the viewer with calm strength and quiet authority. How do you cultivate that presence, and what do you hope viewers feel when encountering these figures?

DM: That calm authority comes from honoring the sitter as sovereign. I slow my process, listen closely, and allow the figure to emerge on her own terms. Scale becomes another critical tool in establishing that presence. Black women have historically been marginalized and made small—physically and symbolically—so I work large to shift the power dynamics in the room. I want the viewer to pause and ask, Am I the one looking, or am I the one being seen? That reversal is intentional; it's a way of reclaiming space, visibility, and authority.

When you imagine future generations encountering your work, what do you hope they inherit—not just visually, but spiritually?

DM: I hope future generations inherit a sense of belonging and spiritual permission. Beyond the images themselves, I want them to feel affirmed—connected to a lineage that valued their interior lives, their power, and their right to be seen.