Martina Kraus - born in Munich 1969 - has been painting since she could hold a pen. Her industrial and fashion design studies in Berlin, after the fall of the wall, were followed by two years of costume design for Club Méditerranée in France, Italy, Greece and the Senegal.

During that time she already started collecting ideas and concentrated on developing her art skills. Eventually she started her first exhibition in the year 2000, displaying a variety of large scale acrylic paintings on reliefed canvas with one particular theme: Signs and Calligraphies from many different cultures.

On her several painting trips to e.g. Lanzarote, Andalucia or Morocco she since then picks up the elemental characteristics of the country and integrates them in the artwork. For example the black lavasand of the vulcano beaches of Lanzarote shows in the black relief of "Red Love II" and the maurish roots of Andalucia influenced the painting "Marrakesh". Her technique varies from scratching poems into modeling paste ("My Romeo"), fitting a mink skull on canvas ("R.I.P.") or bringing old tibetan mantras to life by the glow of metal leaf ("Om mani padme hum").

Exhibitions

The paintings consist of various layers. First, a relief of papermaché or modelling paste (which will correspond with the final motive) is brought onto the raw canvas and primed two times. The next layer is acrylic colour enriched with loose pigments to get the most possible density and depth of colour.
Finally the calligraphy is brought onto the canvas with delicate leaves of gold, silver or copper in a work-intensive technique. Sometimes the artist uses handmade chinese papers or other found objects from her different trips around the world, too.