Ruth Marten's Art (and Me)

" Tableau" Painting by Amy Crehore 1990
Native Girl, ink on old engraving by Ruth Marten 2007

Hair by Ruth Marten 2005 NYTimes article

I have always admired Ruth Marten's art. She's a wonderful painter and illustrator. She has a thing for hair and has made some beautiful and humorous paintings using this theme (above).
Recently, she has been drawing in ink on old prints. "Native Girl" is an example. There are many more on her website:
Ruth Marten
I picked out "Native Girl" from her site because I immediately recognized it as an old engraving that I used in 1990 as reference material for my painting called "Tableau". I have a big, fat book at home that is full of these engravings and it is one of my favorite things. It's called, "The Complete Encyclopedia of Illustration" by J.G. Heck (Park Lane publishers) which contains all of the original illustrations from the 1851 edition of "The Iconographic Encyclopedia of Science, Literature and Art". It is full of birds, beasts, people, landscapes, weather patterns, sea shells, you name it. I can't even describe how amazing this book is.
I think that Ruth Marten and I may have some interests in common.
The Art of Amy Crehore