Martin made her mark early in her career in the 1975 exhibition Fantasy and Reality, organised by the Women's Art Movement at the University of Sydney with Jude Adams, Frances Budden and Toni Robertson.
Even though her work had long been about making social commentary, an exhibition of her prints on paper in 1977 examined her restrained interpretation of the subjects of corruption in big business and the exploitation of workers.
[6] This exhibition could be seen as a pivotal point in her career as Martin transferred her method of expression through prints and posters to other art mediums, importantly painting with oils.
[9] The Canberra Times art critic Sasha Grishin praised her use of "thick, well-worked painterly and textured masses" and thought Martin creatively realised "her own sense of social imagery".
[9] On the other hand, reviewing a 2022/23 exhibition at the Geelong Art Gallery in The Australian, critic Christophe Allen described Martin's "handling of oil painting [as] clumsy and without any refinement or subtlety.
[11] Martin retraced the footsteps of Becker through a series of industrial landscapes, a subject matter she had been increasingly exploring and was to become a recurrent theme in her work.
Although not the winner of the 1982 Canberra Times Art Awards, Martin's stand out work Factory 2 was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Her work was described as "flowing textured paintings and prints" and the local art critic found "boundless energy" in her dark industrial landscapes.
[14] The work was in response to Tom Roberts' monumental painting of the opening of Federal Parliament in Melbourne in 1901, which in those days was hung in the High Court.
[15] Martin worked in an old cow shed in the rustic Canberra suburb of Pialligo where she relied on scaffolding to create her large triptych.
[17] As early as 1989, then art critic for The Canberra Times, Sonia Barron reviewed a group exhibition which included Martin and acknowledged that her theme of the industrial landscape had become quite familiar.
In 2014 she exhibited alongside Fiona Hall and Janet Laurence a large work depicting a landscape deeply altered and scarred by mines, Vivitur Ex Raptor (for Bulga).
[25] Art critic Christopher Allen describes her small-scale black-and white print of a pathway between a row of saw-tooth factory buildings as a successful contrast of perspective and flat pattern, in contrast to the colossal oil painting Factory 2 (Sawtooth) whose substance does not repay the attention its size seemingly demands.