The artist's source of visual information comes from personal snapshots, high school annual pictures, the media, and obituary pictures from the local paper. By isolating the personages in an abstract color field, he tries to make them specific, unavoidable, and even confrontative. Through selective use of pigment, the color field enhances the mood or attitude he wants to convey. Martínez has referred to this field of color as an abstract landscape, the usual band of color at the top suggesting a horizon line. His characters rarely appear in naturalistic skin tone; this is his way of addressing discrimination and thus neutralizing it.