Karl Martens

With an exceptional talent for painting birds, Karl Martens adheres to an idea first mooted by Qing dynasty artist Shih T’ao (1642-1707) who believed that the first brushstroke, the ‘holistic brushstroke’, was of huge importance in that it created something where nothing had been before. Martens (a follower of Zen Buddhism) suggests that “the best result is achieved when no thought is given to it, when the mind rests in emptiness and intuition takes over”. Painting almost entirely from memory, with large Chinese and Japanese calligraphy brushes on hand-made paper,...