Martin was born in Birmingham in 1945, where he studied Graphics and Illustration at Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts. In the 1970s he moved to London, working as a freelance illustrator and teacher. When some of his work was published in print form and distributed throughout Europe and the US, it instigated a move to rural Worcestershire with his wife Anne.

This change of environment stimulated an interest in landscape through the medium of watercolour. He finds watercolour the ideal vehicle to evoke the subtle moods and illusive light changes found in Britain.

He has a special fondness for dusk - twilight being the perfect time of the day to express not only its poetry and transitory quality, but also its meditative aspects. He considers his works more as tone poems than as straight representations of landscape.

Martin is a regular exhibitor at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. He has had various one-man and group exhibitions in the Midlands and London. His work is in collections in Britain, Canada, the US, Holland and Norway. He first exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours Annual Exhibition in 1983, where he was commended for one of his paintings and subsequently invited to become a Member of the Institute.