b'Ron Martin: Small Black Displacements This suite of four black paintings executed in 1993 are charmingly deceptive at first glance. Seemingly made with the same process in mind: acrylic paint mixed with sand applied on board with a horizontal weft, it is only when we look closer that we see slight differences between them. One painting (#9, furthest left) has a bluish tinge to the paint. If the viewer was to take the work off the wall and examine the back of each painting, one would find in a mannerism true to the artist, a system of sorts at play. On the back of Small Displacement #9 we find the artists notation: "Title: Industrial Grit #12 /Sand and Acrylic originally mixed April 6/1992/A mix of Sand, Mars Black, Cobalt Blue Light, Phthalo Blue Light, Manganese Blue /All Colours Stevensons Acrylic". This inventorying of colours accrues interest if we are to take the next painting off the wall (#5, middle left) and read: Title: Captain Picards Bedroom #9 / Sand and Acrylic originally mixed March 18/1992/A mix of Sand, Mars Black, Cadmium Yellow Middle, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Yellow/ Stevensons Acrylic Paint. The paint for Displacements #7 and #8 were mixed on the same day, March 25, 1992. Mixing a black paint using the primary colours is a well-known art school exercise, but in the case of these works it is an example of the artist working within a specific system to create a painting. The documentation of the process of creating the work brings to this suite a depth of meaninganother story perhapsthat one would not have known otherwise.'