Monster Dolls

In this series, I playfully explore doll making with a fascination for monsters and animals. As with all my work, it is an exploration of childhood memory; yet Monster Dolls takes a more focused approach and experiments with character design, texture and materials. The result is an appealingly tactile collection of oddities and misfits from my personal bestiary. The dolls are strange, awkward, disturbing and endearing, evoking a world on the boundaries of desire and attraction, repulsion and fear; a world in which grimacing, silver toothed rabbits are clad in daisy-print polyester skin, or the internal organs of a hot pink fluffy bird are in full view and conveniently detachable from its belly. In the future, I plan to further immerse my audience in this world, creating large scale versions of the dolls, four to ten feet in scale.

Artist Bio:

 I am an artist working in pastels, charcoal, sculpture, fabric, and paint. My work is an exploration of narrative, memory, impulse, personal and popular iconography, ownership and the juxtaposition of 'attractive' with 'repelling'.

I have three series currently in progress: Dollhouse Drawings, Monster Dolls, and Reanimation. While each of my current series is restricted to one medium, the pieces often interrelate, as figures from one series appear in another series -- monster dolls appear in the dollhouse drawings etc.

In addition to creating work in my studio, I also work as an illustrator, designer and animator.
My portfolio is available at: http://www.marthasue.net/portfolio