In Martha Bone’s series LIMINAL SPACES, she works from her own photographs. Trying not to impose her will on the process, she starts with an intention but often ends up in quite a different place. She paints with worn-down brushes, digging into the surface, sanding it all back, and trying to coax a 2D image into a 3D dimension.

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Martha Bone creates collaged paintings and assemblages on canvas and paper that explore the boundaries of understanding and our connection with the primitive, mythic, imagined, and feared. She utilizes nature and prehistoric symbols in her work to gain a deeper understanding of the self. Through a process of constructing, obliterating, erasing, and reforming, images take on a sculptural quality and convey unexpected meanings. Bone's objective is to delve beyond the surface of things and reach the world of the formless, where consciousness resides, and reveal what is hidden.

In her art, shape is the primary focus, and Bone distills information until it becomes simple, powerful, and ambiguous, much like a vivid dream with a hidden meaning. She incorporates materials such as screws, bolts, steel hardware, and incinerated car parts, which allude to a landscape built with tension and held together by the things that bind us. Each artwork is a shape unto itself, yet part of a whole, with layered colors and lines that blend together until the image and substrate become one. Drawing serves as the foundation and base layer for Bone's assemblages and serves as an incubator for her ideas.

Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Martha Bone attended Syracuse University, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors in painting and illustration. In 2018, she received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Manhattan and works in the South Bronx.