Some Queens Cut It - from the Tarot Series

Fred Martin

The Tarot deck has four suits that are ruled by a royal court. There are Swords, Pentacles, Cups and Wands and each of these suits has a King, Queen, Knight and Page as its ruling class.

The Pages are the future of the court and the Knights are the messengers and defenders of their suit. The King is the ruler and the Queen is the heart of the nation. Each Queen card is the emotional manifestation of the suit she rules.

Fred Martin was inspired to create the Tarot Series while teaching at Cal State San Jose, in the late 1970s. "A student had brought some Tarot things she had made using oil pastel on paper, with the information and imagersy coming from Douglas' book on the Tarot. ...I was thinking my work had become the prodcut of a stale subjectivity, and here was the opening into an abjective archetypal system, one I could explore as a way beyond the limitations of my ego and the tedium of its life." - Fred Martin (from FredMartin.net)

To create the series, Martin first made slides of the Major Arcana of the Tarot, the major arcana being the suit of 22 permanent trumps within the deck of 78 Tarot cards. He then projected and traced the imagery, improvising where the slides were overexposed. After producing the 22 drawings, Martin translated each of these images into linoleum blocks and eventually collaged the printed works onto sheets of heavy wove paper, drawn individually with imagery inspired by the Tarot exploration in watercolor and ink.