Martha Iserman

Martha Iserman’s paintings are interpretations of familiar scenes from nature but observed through a hyper-focused lens. She zooms into a species to give it new life. A patch of mushrooms becomes a city of intertwining stems and gills. An unassuming grasshopper becomes a magnificent flying creature.

Martha is most interested in creating worlds within worlds by depicting familiar organisms in unfamiliar ways. Her style is very detailed, using colour, composition, and form to break out of traditional representational art tropes. She creates art as a way to interpret the underlying systems in history, language, and nature. She finds motivation in fossil collections, mycology, folklore, natural history museums, terrariums, esoteric traditions, entomology, and sea monsters. Her work exemplifies a love of complex overlapping stories and visuals.

Currently living and working in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, Australia, Martha has found boundless inspiration from the ecosystem. Living in a fern tree forest, surrounded by hills and streams, and visited by exotic parrots and bushy-tailed possums has been a dream.