'Anything I put out into the world, I want to be a prayer': musician Laura Marling on eschewing traditional merch for tarot-inspired prints

In autumn 2016, Laura Marling was playing a run of shows in the American Northwest and West. Starting in Washington state, the English singer-songwriter moved on to Oregon and then down to California.

“Me and my friend, who was on tour with me, were going down the coast,” Marling recalls of a journey that took them from Mill Valley, to Santa Cruz, to Santa Barbara. “And we were losing so much money on the tour that we were staying in campsites. It's not a boo-hoo story, it was fun to do,” she clarifies with a smile. “It was nice weather. But we were in tents – well, a single tent.

“We didn't have much cash, but we bought some lino and some really nice card and we started designing sigils. We would make 15 of them and sell them at the shows, and then that would be enough money for the campsite and the petrol for the car.”

The sigils were made as linocuts – “so they're easily repeatable" – and were postcard-sized, signed and dated. Marling charged $10 for each.

Prior to 2016, across the course of her first five albums, the 34-year-old hadn’t been much invested in T-shirts or any of the related paraphernalia that artists normally sell on tour. Or, as she puts it: “My merch has always been abysmal, terrible, because I'm not really interested in it.”

But this was different. “The prints were, you know, spiritually affirmative – because I was into all that stuff. Well, I still am into all stuff… But it felt nice to sell something that actually had a good intention behind it.”

The following year, for the Brit Award-winning musician’s sixth album Semper Femina (which would go on to be nominated for the Grammy for Best Folk Album), the artwork comprised, in part, another sigil. Marling sold larger-format works based on that sleeve design. She also made bespoke prints for each show on her subsequent tour. “Then I just got really into the craft of it.”

Eight years on from that needs-must travelling Californian craft fair, Marling’s prints have become something of a cottage industry – well, a terraced-Victorian-house-in-East-London industry – for the artist. She’s almost completed a series of prints based on all of her albums, the only one not tackled so far being Alas, I Cannot Swim, the 2008 debut which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize (as were three subsequent albums).

“I have always been very into Tarot,” she says of the thematic connection linking her fresh visual interpretations of her musical back-catalogue. “So I was really into how much Easter-eggy imagery you could get into one picture. Then I just started building them in this Tarot format, with one representing each album.” These limited-runs she periodically “drops” on her website and via her socials; like a rarefied new sneaker, they habitually sell out quicker than you can say “queue outside Supreme in Soho at midday”.

Now, for her glorious upcoming album Patterns in Repeat, a gossamer-light and heart-deep song-cycle reflecting on motherhood, family and generational legacy, she’s designed both the artwork and another new print.

Congratulations on the artworks, Laura – an even more remarkable achievement given that you’ve also been studying for a Master's in psychoanalysis. Are you self-taught at the lino-cutting art?

Yes, but I did a lot of trial and error. When I was taking it very seriously, before I got pregnant, I had a printing studio and a proper printing press. I was doing designs for other people's stuff – my friend who has a cider company and other bits and bobs. I was Creative Director for Two Orchards Cider! I loved it!

Did you do A-level art at school?

No. I did GCSE art but I think I got a D. I've always painted, always done watercolours and drawings. Then, as in the new album artwork, I really got into those Kandinsky- or Klimt-esque spiritual drawings, because you're letting the drawing lead the outcome. Not to imbue them with any more [meaning]! It's not that I think that I'm spiritual, it's just that that's how you construct the picture.

I got really into those when I was living in LA. I was hired by a friend to illustrate her book. It was a pamphlet called How To Be A Woman, and it was about self-care from a Kundalini yoga perspective. We did a run of 150.

Does this stretch a different creative muscle for you than songwriting does?

Yeah. Especially the repetitive nature of it. It's not like reaching out into the ether and hoping for the muse to hit you, like songwriting is. It's practical design, and then repetition. I found that when I was also doing my dissertation. I would write 2000 words in the morning. Then in the afternoon I'd do 100 prints and listen to music. That was a perfect day. Songwriting happens kind of by accident all the time. But those [other] things keep idle hands busy.

And creating the pieces at home, I guess, also fits in with being a new mum…

I did a run last Christmas, when my daughter was six months old. So after a long day of mind-numbing parenting, in the evening I was just doing prints in here – we had them all hanging up in the living-room.

Each album-based piece obviously has different inspirations. The print for Song for Our Daughter (2020) was inspired by Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of war and sexual love, who you were reading about when you were writing it. What about A Creature I Don't Know (2011)?

That had an interesting process. I started with a picture of Georgia O'Keeffe. It was a nude, and I just drew the shadows of her face. That's obviously a benefit of lino: because you're working in shadow rather than in light, you can't see that it’s Georgia O'Keeffe, but it has an eerie, uncanny sense of it being a face. So I have a little bit of creative fun with it. But there’s not, by any stretch, some grand statement behind it.

But you do like changing things up in your art pieces – the cover for Patterns In Repeat, for example, is in another medium entirely.

It's oil pastel, and it's done with compass and ruler. It's quite a laborious process. You get the expanding dimensions from the centre of the circle. And you start to use the compass in whatever way you want, symmetrically. Then you draw out whatever picture is appearing in the centre. So it's kind of a random process.

So, like a more rarefied version of the old Spirograph toy?

Exactly. It's like colouring in, basically.

In terms of the Patterns in Repeat sleeve imagery, of a woman on her knees, praying, what does that tell us about the contents of the record?

I suppose the record is basically a prayer. A maternal prayer. So I guess in quite an on-the-nose way, that's what that represents. Again, that ties into the origin of all the sigil prints. I'm very conscious now, with the music that I make – and in any images, and anything I write or put out into the world – that I want it to be a prayer. I'm not religious. But I want it to have a good intention, and not an either untethered or an ill intention. I try and think of everything like that.

Certainly in terms of the colours, also feels autumnal: fecund, fertile and harvest festival-y. Is that intentional?

Well, this was done last autumn, so it probably was an accident. But I am autumn! All my music comes out in the autumn.

When you say your merchandise has always been “abysmal”, does this bespoke artwork perhaps lend it wings?

No, [because] we're not putting on a t-shirt. You can only buy them as prints. That's purposeful. They can only be handmade by me. I've made more money out of prints than I have from album sales, because I was in such a bad [major label record] deal. I've literally made no money from the first five albums. So to go from nothing to something is fantastic.

You’re doing a pair of sold-out London and New York residencies in October and November, in Hackney and Brooklyn. Are you doing special drops for those?

We're selling the new print there. And I might do one-off designs for the shows, which is quite fun – 100 of them a night or something.

In this era of superfans, who prize bespoke connection, directly between the artist and the fan – directly, even, from the artist's hand – that’s a valuable and powerful piece of engagement with your audience.

Obviously, that's what I hope. I like the idea that it is actually touched [by me]. It feels manageable for the soul.

You’re now 15 years and eight albums into your career. Is it rewarding knowing that you're over every single aspect of the creativity that goes with releasing a record?

Absolutely. But I should say: only under unbelievable supervision from the people I work with – because I am chaotic when it comes to deadlines! I just wouldn't be able to if it wasn't for people hounding me all the time! So, only because I'm so well-looked after. But it feels like an honest way of making a living, and it all rounds out nicely.

Patterns in Repeat (Chrysalis/Partisan Records) is released on 25th October. Subscribe to Laura’s Substack here