Alizarin-Crimson

 
Bold and monumental, Alizarin-Crimson was produced in parallel to the Bright Red Paintings in May 1972. At the time, Ron Martin had a studio on the third floor of 68 King Street, in London, Ontario, where he lived and worked. His series of red monochromatic paintings is among his most brilliant achievements of the early 1970s. Titled after the name of the pigment he used, Alizarin-Crimson is a chromatic epiphany that is as visually seductive as his other One Colour Paintings—for example, Cadmium Red Deep (1971) and Bocour Red (1973). Inclined to adopt rigorous methods, Martin often works in series, with arbitrary constraints such as fixed time limits or restricted quantities of paint. Although each body of work is approached differently—monochrome, geometric, pictorial—the material quality of paint remains the central focus. Martin paints in different ways: with his bare hands, with a brush, on the floor, by pouring or scraping the paint, by accumulation or direct application. The result is resolutely gestural art, and Alizarin-Crimson is no exception. What makes this pièce de resistance so striking is its materiality: broad strokes of luminous, fiery red paint cover the entire surface. With his highly expressive gestural method reminiscent of the action and drip paintings of the 1940s, Martin redefines the notion of seriality by conferring a unique character on each of his pieces. To do so, he applies generous amounts of alizarin crimson in swirling marks in various textures—from finely scraped to thickly layered. The drippings that descend from the top of the frame are echoed in other areas where the brush was overloaded with paint. With its deeply rich tonalities, Alizarin-Crimson conveys an amazing amount of dramatic intensity.
 
(Annie Lafleur)