Ron’s Blog
Coming Full Circle
Number 34: “Cone Down,” 2022-23. Acrylic on 20-inch diameter canvas, mounted on metal and wood backing, installed as a diamond. Last fall after making 34...
The Lack Of Power
Yesterday we had an 18-hour internet blackout, including 4 or 5 hours of e-power outage. I was reminded that the lack of power is my most precious asset. To wit: The...
A Tenacious Yellow Flower
Join me in celebrating the 30th anniversary of my cheerful, bee-attracting yellow columbine. In 1993 a friend who was working on building my place brought it over with some...
“Pixeldust”
By Ronald and Barbara Davis / Art and Technology: Getting “Pixeldust” From There to Here “Pixeldust” is my conceptual term for many recent pictures, which I create on...
Philip Guston – Stand Flat-Footed
Reach for essence of thought, and the mark follows. With Philip Guston in art world news recently, apparently because of the controversial acquisition of a large number of...
Staurolite Power
I love staurolite crystals. They are rare, surprising geometric objects found in the dirt and rock of exposed strata in a few obscure places around the world, like Taos, New...
Barnett Newman at The Russian Tea Room
During a trip to Washington, DC in 1967 to attend the Barbara Rose-curated “A New Aesthetic” show at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, my LA dealer Nicholas Wilder and I...
David-Richard Gallery, New York
December 1 - 30, 2022 - DAVID-RICHARD GALLERY - NEW YORK, NY - David Richard Gallery presented Optical, Shaped and Color Abstractions, Paintings: 1963 – 1965 by Ronald...
Ronald Davis at The Jewish Museum
March 24-October 1, 2023 -The Jewish Museum - Two-Thirds Yellow, from Ronald Davis's 1960s Slab Series of shaped, hard-edge polyester resin and fiberglass paintings, will...
Dave Hickey: RIP
I was sad to hear of writer, art critic, and scholar of culture Dave Hickey's passing last month. We met in the early 2000s in Taos at Penny and Gregg Hawks' home during one...
A Conceptual Art Happening
At my opening at 203 Fine Art in Taos on September 25, 2021, I met another local artist, Helen Gene Nichols, for the first time. Helen's kaleidoscopic, tessellated...
Review: The Wheel is Coming Round
by Tamra Testerman, Taos News Tempo, Visual Art section, Sept. 23, 2021 – Taos artist Ronald Davis is "mercurial. He is very eccentric. He doesn't talk to writers. Email...
Review: The basics of complexity: Ronald Davis on abstraction and perception
Michael Abatemarco – Santa Fe New Mexican, Sep 24, 2021 – Regardless of the form a painting takes — whether it’s abstract expressionism, cubism, or color-field painting —...
Studio Shoot with Lee Clockman
Lee Clockman, Taos area photographer, came out to my studio several years ago and did a wonderful set of photos of the studio and of me. At some point over time, I somehow...
The “Be Safe! Shrine” and The Cycle of Life
A young man named Jeff came here a decade or so ago to pick up some art, and let it be known he needed some work. It was good timing, because I needed a studio assistant; so...
Electronic Music and The Music Series
Ocean is a sound "painting" or sound sculpture that I composed and performed in 1979 on a Buchla 700 synthesizer that Don Buchla build for me in 1978. It came as a...
T Bone Burnett, Larry Poons, and that Beach Boys chord
I just bought the brand-new Beach Boys compilation release, "Feel Flows" – The Sunflower & Surf's Up Sessions 1969-1971, and it's terrific. Listening to its six hours of...
Mr. Peanut’s Demise
Mr. Peanut died in January 2021. At the time, I was shocked and saddened. Besides that, I was devastated. When I was eight years old, I had a Mr. Peanut bank. It stood about...
Nicholas Wilder On Being A Dealer
ARTWEEK, August 24, 1974 •by Martha Alf • Referring to himself as an "art peddler," dynamic, Los Angeles-based art dealer Nicholas Wilder spoke in May (1974) to an informal...
The New Museum of Modern Art… An Artist’s View
by Ronnie Landfield • 2005 • The Cause – The Museum of Modern Art has reopened for business on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The original headquarters...
“The Essence Of Abstraction” by Ronnie Landfield
This essay was originally printed in the catalog that accompanied the forty year retrospective, "Ronald Davis: Abstractions 1962 – 2002," exhibited at the Butler Institute...
“3D/CG” at Eight Modern, Santa Fe, 2007
Richard Tobin, THE Magazine, April 01, 2008 • 3D/CG, a solo exhibition at Eight Modern Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM • Nov 16 – Dec 31, 2007 • VIEW and download catalog PDF •...
Early Studio Days
Featured photo: Gail Chadell Nanao. Photo of Roller Rink upstairs: Unknown. In the early 1960s, I lived communally with a rag-tag bunch of artists, including a couple of San...
Wallpaper Statement Part 1
I woke up one morning in 2002 with a ripe stream-of-consciousness Artist Statement burning in my brain, and it wanted to come out – right now. My wife sat down with me and...
Wallpaper Statement Part 2
Continued from Part 1: The first painting I painted, a couple of years before I had thoughts of becoming a real painter, was a bleeding half of a cantaloupe on a...
Wallpaper Statement Part 3
Continued from Part 2: In painting, I had discovered a "profession" that suited my dependencies. That is to say, if I became an artist, it was partly because it fitted my...
Wallpaper Statement Part 4
Continued from Part 3: I drove east in 1962, having been invited to the Norfolk Yale School of Music and Art as a grantee. The crits I got there were incomprehensible. After...
