Image: Kirsty Martinsen, Bodiness inSPACE, September 2024, photograph Sam Roberts.
Kirsty Martinsen is a painter, writer, filmmaker and performer who draws upon life experience as a disabled artist to inform her unique practice. Sustained by her love of colour and drawing, she creates using whatever materials are available at the time. If she cannot use her hands to create, she uses her wheelchair, her body, her life.
Why have you pursued a creative career?
The career chose me. I’ve just followed.
What are your key inspirations?
The poetry of the natural world, my body, my life, music.
Has performance always formed part of your painting and drawing practice, and how did you arrive at this point in your career?
Performance has become a current part of my creative practice because years of physical, and motor deterioration has meant I’m no longer able to continue the painting practice I was trained in. Instead of lamenting this, I’ve chosen to continually adapt and look for ways I can keep making – If I can’t use my hands to create, I will use my wheelchair, my body, my life.
Image: Kirsty Martinsen, Bodiness: Neoterica, Adelaide Festival 2024, , photograph Sam Roberts.
Is there an artistic medium you’re wanting to, but are yet to try?
Glass.
How do you work through creative blocks?
One technique I use is a somatic process. I concentrate on a specific area of my body that’s sore or aching and start by finding a colour for it. Then I talk to the area, inquiring about its energy and vibration, responding to whatever reply I get to find textures, gestures and sometimes words. By feeling into the area, I’m able to get out of my head and into my body, back to the freedom and joy of colour and mark making.
Images: Kirsty Martinsen, The Offering, 2006, pastel, charcoal, watercolour and acrylic on paper, 2.5m x 2.2m, image courtesy the artist.