Born in Pennsylvania, Martha Colburn lives and works in Holland and New York City. A (self-taught) film-maker and multimedia artist, while her scope is broad, her proclivity is for stop-motion animation. Combining collage and hand-painted techniques to create the signature two-dimensional cutouts manipulated on film to which she refers as her 'puppets', Colburn's eccentric and unique style is realised with a variety of unconventional methods.
Premised on this innovative exploration of processes, Colburn advocates low-tech, analogue media, specifically 16mm and Super 8 projectors to construct an environment which Colburn deems a 'two-and-a-half-D world', one which simulates 3-D, though every layer applied is 2-D. Her embarkation into film production emerged from a series of musical collaborations, and soundtrack and live accompaniment remain an integral aspect of her output. Process is the nucleus of Colburn's work and its intensive technique is vital to her practice.
Frenetic in style, with an essence of practiced chaos, this endeavour encapsulates the idiosyncratic proficiency of her craft. Colburn's distinct work has developed from abstraction toward the figurative, underpinned by stirring social and political commentary. A method built on improvisation; the thesis and resolution develop within the making process. As animation has traditionally served to depict the unseen, be it minute, imagined or unrepresentable, Colburn perceives her work as a visual vent for the abstractions of her imagination. Thus within the process, the practice and the artist concurrently evolve, culminating in a symbolic documentation of her life.
