Tuttle builds fragmented topographies that shape geometric abstraction through the lens of the natural world. Her surfaces often incorporate stone, charred wood, and cast aluminum, generating nuanced tensions between opacity and transparency, weight and lightness, interior and exterior.

Her compositions emphasize materiality through physical processes such as dyeing, weaving, and stitching, which permeate each work with color drawn from naturally sourced substances. Translucent stretched silk is dyed using plant matter and iron, while other sections are painted with mineral pigments, creating subtle, elemental fields of color. Visually, the marks on the silk evoke the cracking of geological topographies. The visible stretcher frames appear to emerge and recede behind these sections, contributing to the balance of the composition rather than functioning solely as supports. When combined with collected minerals, the works resonate with broader geological inquiries, addressing how relationships can be formed with the geological world.

 

Martha Tuttle (born 1989 in Santa Fe, NM) lives and works in Livingston, Montana. She received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. She has had solo exhibitions at the Moody Center for the Arts, Houston (2024), and at Storm King Art Center, New York (2020–2021). Tuttle participated in a Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva (2019) and received a grant from the Josef Albers Foundation (2014). Her work is included in selected public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.