We've linked quite a few articles about 1960s rock concert posters, which might be called the heyday of the medium. However, one young artist is bringing back the art of that medium in a big way- not by copying what was great in the past, but with his own style. Baltimore artist Luke Martin is only 22 years old, but his posters for Dave Matthews Band, Foo Fighters, The National, Eddie Vedder, Phish, and Death Cab for Cutie are already collector's items. Martin's rise has been meteoric.
“When I was in high school,” he says, “my art teacher, Kurt Plinke, who is one of my main mentors, would always take my black and white paints away from me. He’d put them in his desk, and then tell me that I needed to learn how to do what I wanted without the crutch of white or black. It took me a while to learn how to do that, but he was right, especially when it comes to black. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever used straight black in any of my posters. Usually, I default to a muted brown because it gives the piece an almost vintage feel, like a sepia tone in an old photograph.”
Another self-imposed constraint is how he treats text, the Dave Matthews Band diner being a good example of what he’s striving for. “As much as I can, I try to avoid placing text on top of the illustration. It makes a more interesting gig poster when you can incorporate the text. I want the art to be first and the text to be secondary.”
Usually that art, regardless of the placement of its accompanying text, feels as if it’s from another time, and the places Martin scratches into his boards often resemble parts of Caroline County on the eastern shore of Maryland, where he grew up in a tiny town called Greensboro with two older brothers and a twin sister. “That’s definitely where it comes from,” he says of the retro scenery that fills many of his prints. “I moved away from the shore about five years ago. Now, whenever I go back, everything’s exactly the same. It’s like stepping into a time capsule.”
Read about Luke Martin and his work, and see some lovely examples at Collectors Weekly.