I had to push the ocean in front of me before I could swim.
– Ron Martin
What makes Ron Martin’s pièce de resistance, Iron Oxide—Mars Black No. 1, from 1973, so striking is its pure materiality: the smooth black paint has been raked by hand across the entire surface in one fluid, uniform gesture. The frontality of the paint reveals the work’s pictorial quality while simultaneously masking any discernible image underneath its magnificent lustre. Ironically, the brightest shine clings to the blackest masses, like Velcro on felt. Occasional patches of white gessoed canvas peek through, untouched, highlighting the increasing—and theoretically infinite—number of paths carved into the thick paint. Other similar works, in which the paint is applied with the fingers, rather than the side of the hand or a trowel, are Iron Oxide—Mars Black No. 3 (January 1974) and A Face Facing a Face No. 5 (January 1974).
Walter Klepac, who studied Martin’s work closely, gives a definitive and convincing description of the Black Paintings that references Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings from the 1940s: “Their specificity and intransigence, their sense of order and underlying coherence seem to attest to the presence of a highly focused and intelligent purpose quite unlike anything we have come to expect of surface and support, material based paintings of this period.” His Black Paintings series and his One Colour Painting, first exhibited at Carmen Lamanna Gallery (Toronto) in June 1975, were acclaimed by critics for their formal rigour and excellence. In his review of the Lamanna show for The Toronto Star, noted critic Gary Michael Dault called Martin one of Canada’s most important painters and lauded the exhibition as his best to date. Both exhibitions have since entered the history books as being part of the most significant and radical chapters in the history of contemporary Canadian art. The Black Paintings series represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1978. In 2012, Ron Martin received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
