b'GregoryHumeniukRon Martin: The World Paintings InsixyearsRonMartinacceleratedfromgraduatingH.B.BealSecondarySchoolin London,Ontario,towinningthe1966purchaseawardattheAnnualWesternOntario Exhibition in London, to showing his hard-edgeConclusion and Transfer abstractions in the National Gallery of Canadas landmark exhibitionThe Heart of London to hisWorld , Paintings His inaugural solo exhibition at TorontosCarmen LamannaGallery in 1971 . featuredtheWorldPaintingsthatGaryMichaelDaultproclaimedmadeMartin, indisputably a painter of the first importance in Canada. TheWorld Paintings about through Martins stifled desire to continue work on thecame Conclusion and Transferpaintings. When a grant application to support that work wasunsuccessful, a follow-up short-term grant allowed him to buy the materials he used to develop theWorld Paintings. Beginning with a pencil grid of two by two inch squares on paper, Martin applied strokes of watercolour at regular intervals. His chance perception of the marks on a sheet resting on his worktable made him aware of the vertical strokes narrowing and the horizontal strokes widening. Cottoning onto this, and through dozens of preparatorystudies,hearrivedattheWorldPaintings finalformofonebyoneinch squares containing three strokes: two parallel strokes (alternating vertical and horizontal) bisected by a diagonal (top-right to bottom-left between verticals, or top-left to bottom-right between horizontals). The genius of theWorld Paintingsand Martins uvre is arresting the elemental in the advancement of profound experience in time.The tapered strokes, one-third of an inch wide, register uniformly when viewed directly. Whentheviewermovesinthespacetheysharewiththepaintings,thestrokes concatenating widening and narrowing reconfigures a pictorial space activated by the viewer, and not by a figure-ground illusion. Through theWorld PaintingsMartin went from squares with three strokes of the same colour to three strokes of different colours always restricted to red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown and black. Rigourously intuitive, he pursued schemes that both incite attempts to decode their structure and make it a mugs game. The pattern ofWorld #26 World #37 is instantly apprehensible. That of is far from it. Much more important and profound is Martins excitation of the experience of the experiencer, and that nearly fifty years later these paintings arrest, retain and sustain attention. Gregory Humeniuk Toronto August 2019 Gregory Humeniuk is the author of Ron Martin: The Material and The Conceptual (2004), Ron Martin: Conclusions and Transfers / Conclusions and Transpositions (2018), and ispreparing a monograph on the artist.__________________________________ 1 Gary Michael Dault, In the galleries, Toronto, Artscanada, vol. 28, no. 2, issueno. 154/155 (April-May 1971): 66.2'