cartoonist, was born in Broken Hill and grew up in Adelaide. He took up full-time cartooning in Sydney in 1981, mainly working for the 'Stay in Touch’ page of the Sydney Morning Herald , e.g. 'How Balmain Is Different [4 frames of two robbers holding up man]/ “Halt! Who goes there?”/ “L-L-Lance.”/“All art is political, Lance.”/ “Yes, sir.”/ “If I pick my nose for three hours in front of a camera…”/ “That’s not art…”/ “...with no film in it.”/ “That’s genius.”’ 11 May 1985 (ill. Christine Dixon). He also drew cartoons for the Australian Financial Review in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many illustrating humorous articles by the journalist David Dale.
Martin won the Stanley Award for best single gag cartoonist in 1987 and 1988. In 1988 he won a Walkley Award for his cartoon Progress ( SMH 27 October 1988, 9). He contributed ink and collage series to the 'Alice 125’ exhibition, e.g. Alice in Windyland which hesubsequently published in Good Weekend 3 March 1990. He stated that this was in order to put it [the exhibition?], 'like Alice, into the realm of popular culture’. His first children’s book illustrations, done in 1990, were for The Return of the Baked Bean by Sydney writer Deborah Oswald. Martin moved to New York to live in the late 1980s – see 'Beached in New York, SMH Good Weekend 15 July 1995, 39-41, returning to Sydney briefly in 1995, where he again drew cartoons for the SMH . He has now disappeared from its pages again, presumably having returned to NY.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
