Martin Puryear’s practice is dedicated to craftsmanship and traditional building techniques. Puryear, whose distinctive style has been considered a descendant of Minimalism, began studying many forms of craft in his youth; his variegated training includes carpentry, stone masonry, boat building, basketry, construction, and woodworking—many of which directly influenced Puryear when he began his artistic career in the 1960s. He is best known for his use of natural materials in creating his sculptures, including tar, rawhide, stone, wire, metals, and, most frequently, wood.

Martin Puryear’s began creating works on paper in the 1960s and returned to the medium at the turn of this century, after a period of devotion to monumental sculpture. The relationship between Puryear’s sculpture and printmaking practice is displayed in works like, Untitled (State 1) (2016), which appears to be a blueprint for the artist’s monumental sculpture, Big Bling (2016) in Philadelphia. However, in this two-dimensional iteration, the shape takes on the appearance of a large, seated cat or an abstracted human form, and the resemblance confirms that whatever the medium, Puryear’s work flows from the same creative stream.