The artist employs abstraction and color as essential tools across his opus. These principles allow him to break away from the older Chicano art canon, primarily about representation, by deconstructing and reclaiming Chicano motifs such as the serape and step pyramid. This is seen in his 1980s work, Papalote, where the artist refracts a serape in a kaleidoscopic way, amplifying the simplicity of the bold colors and blunt lines.

In 1977 Santos Martinez wrote:

"Martinez has also experimented with the basic zerape format in attempting to create an analytical transformation of those shapes and colors into an abstract and valid independent creation. In the past, because Chicano art has been about representation,
abstraction has not played an important role. Today, abstraction does play a conceptual role in Chicano art through the exploitation of those motifs essential to the total Chicano experience (zerape, step pyramid, etc.)."

"Dále Gas: An Exhibition of Contemporary Chicano Art." Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), 1977