Baker Artist Portfolios

Annika Marthinuss is an artist from Ellicott City. She is currently attending MICA to obtain her MFA in studio art. She is mostly a painter, though she also enjoys working with textiles, printmaking, and 3D elements like plaster.

Artist Statement: I am an anxious and autistic artist who works primarily with acrylic and oil paint, along with textiles and some collage elements. As someone who struggles with verbal language, I consider the canvas absorbing me and taking what I can’t communicate in words and translating it into a visual language. My work is a part of me, a self-portrait of sorts, though not always directly. I explore interiority and exteriority in emotions and persona. How a person looks on the outside is not how they appear on the inside always. I am also interested in masking and camouflage, and how parts of myself remain hidden. I like layering these hidden and exposed parts on top of each other through moments of collage and glazed layers of paint. Isolation is also an important part of my work – autism and mental health issues can feel so isolating and difficult to interact with the world. My hope is that by being vulnerable about my identity, others can relate to the experiences of feeling like an outsider, in whichever way that may present itself.