Ronald Davis: Paintings from the Music Series

For four years in the 1980s, Ronald Davis, b. 1937, poured and dripped the opaque, cel-vinyl acrylic paint historically used by animators onto canvas and paper. Connecting to his own collegiate studies of music composition within his painting, it was the music he’d play during the process that would ultimately influence his movements, leaving it all up to intuition and chance. From 1982-85, the artist completed over 100 works in The Music Series, which have been exhibited at both the Harwood Museum of Art, 2005 and BlumHelman, New York, 1984.

   “The Music Series represents an ‘outside the box’ departure from my trademark perspective illusionistic works of the 1960s and 1970s… They are, too, a homage to my heroes: painter Jackson Pollock, composer Charles Ives and instrument builder Don Buchla. They were painted with my heart, not my intellect.”

- Ronald Davis