Ron Martin

1943–

Ron Martin (1943– ) is a Canadian Painter. He is associated with London Regionalism, a Canadian art movement that took place in the city of London, Ontario, where Martin was born and grew up. He currently lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.

Martin has had an active art practice since he set-up his first studio with Murray Favro in 1964. He uses the act of creating a work as a type of performance, in which he often sets arbitrary constraints on his process, such as limiting the time or gallons of paint to the production of each work. These procedures suggest an affinity with conceptual art.

Martin has consistently worked in series, such as the monochromatic "Bright Red Paintings" of 1972 and the subsequent "Black Paintings," from 1974 to 1981. In these series, he employed a wide range of techniques: pouring, brushing, scraping, and using his bare hands, and consistently worked on the floor or other flat surfaces. The monochromatic paintings vary from vigorously gestural works that evolved into thin layers, much of the paint had been scraped away, to highly textured accumulations of dense, encrusted acrylic. In the 1990s, he created several series based on a configuration of circles, using oil paint squeezed directly from the tube.

Throughout his career, Martin has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Canada, the United States, Germany, Japan, and France. In 1978 he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. He has been shown in numerous group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Canada and at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

In 2012, Martin was awarded a Governor General's Award for Visual and Media Arts.