Martin, Agnes (1912-2004), was a Canadian-born painter known for her geometrical abstract pictures based on the form of the grid. Martin was influenced by classical Chinese philosophy and Buddhist doctrine. These influences are reflected in the artist’s attempt to capture what she sensed as the rhythm and beauty of the universe in her work.
Martin planned her paintings carefully before she started a canvas. A typical Martin work emphasizes a single soft background color on a square canvas. In the grid style she developed about 1960, Martin covered the canvas with a fine grid of vertical and horizontal lines that created subtle rectangular shapes. In later works, she used horizontal lines only.
Martin created her pictures in a variety of media, including oil paint, gesso, acrylics, India ink, and pencil. She added texture to her pictures through the pressure of the palette knife, brush, pencil, or the ruler she used to draw the lines of the grid. These paintings have been praised for their delicacy and the illusion of forms floating in space.
Martin was born on March 22, 1912, in Macklin, Saskatchewan. She settled in the United States in 1931 and became a U.S. citizen in 1950. She began her career painting representational pictures but did not gain attention until she developed her grid style. Martin stopped painting in 1967 to travel and examine the direction of her work. She resumed painting in 1974. She retained her grid style at first but eventually reduced it to bands of horizontal lines. Martin died on Dec. 16, 2004.
