Artist Ronald Davis at The Harwood Museum, Taos, New Mexico with his painting Three Panel, 1969.
Pigmented polyester resin and fiberglass, approximately 7 x 18 feet. Gift to the Museum by Charles Cowles
RONALD DAVIS
Geometrician, Abstract Illusionist
Artist RONALD DAVIS –
Geometrician,
Abstract Illusionist
Ronald Davis is a painter known since the early 1960s for his use of geometric abstraction, abstract illusionism, shaped canvas painting, and 3D computer graphics. Davis has numerous exhibitions to his name, and has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. Returning to painting in 2001, he made several new series including the PVC Hinges, Squares, and Diamonds; the PVC Shaped Series; and several new series of digital renderings, expanding his established Pixel Dust Series. In 2021, he began a new series of over fifty canvas and acrylic paintings, the circular Polar Series.
From the catalog accompanying the Untitled. Art Fair exhibition of artist Ronald Davis’s works at Miami Basel, December, 2015:
“The figure-ground relationship between the painting and the wall was intensified when these paintings began to skew off the rectangle. It was intensified further with Davis’ illusionary excavations into the center of the painting and into the ground supplied by the wall…This fiat allowed art to conquer the room…”
– Dave Hickey
FEATURED:
CUT OUT SERIES
Rarely shown and rarely seen, Davis’s flexible resin paintings of the 1970-1971 Cut Out Series epitomize illusionary, hard-edge shaped painting and Davis’s signature incandescent color choices. Dozens of archived transparencies are being scanned, color corrected and displayed, with more to be added.
Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA, 1945-1980 – Video interview for The Getty Center’s 2011 exhibition
“My work is comprised of aggressively decorative, meaningless, unidentified floating objects that pretend to be rational. Illusion is my vehicle. Opticality is paramount. Like DuChamp, I reintroduced perspective illusion of objects in painting. The objects themselves remain abstract and non-referential.”
– Ronald Davis
Studio International interview
by ELIZABETH BUHE
“Two artists who use perspective in their work are Duchamp and Davis. I’m kind of proud of that.”
Davis talks about his art and how he started out in the 1960s, his friendship with Judy Chicago, playing chess with David Hockney and having a Scotch with Clement Greenberg.
Artist Ronald Davis is represented by
Artist Ronald Davis is represented by
Charlotte Jackson
Fine Art
Santa Fe, NM
Charlotte Jackson
Fine Art
Santa Fe, NM
