Jason Martin, British (1970 - )

A young British artist, Mr. Martin paints by covering largish surfaces of stainless steel, aluminum and plexiglass with (usually) a single color of oil paint; he then pulls a fine, sometimes specially made comblike tool across the wet paint, creating striations that move up and down according to various intervals and rhythms.

The electric-blue glide of ''Patrol'' wavers only slightly but nervously and consistently, like the results of lie-detector tests taken by the guiltless or dozens of flat-lining heart monitors. The marigold yellow surfaces of ''Cha-Cha'' and ''Samba'' have a lot of wave action; their wide undulations gleam, as if three or four spotlights were situated just above, or below, them. Elsewhere, as in the burgundy ''Boudoir,'' the surface ripples, like a curtain. And occasionally the raking tool is lifted and the surface broken, creating dramatic fissures of fringed paint.

The artists brought to mind by Mr. Martin's no-hands technique and glistening effects include Jackson Pollock and Robert Ryman, Alan Charlton, Bridget Riley and David Budd, an American painter whose monochrome surfaces accrue in small palette-knifed, light-deflecting strokes, as well as contemporary painters like James Hyde.