Page 40 - Studio International - November 1967

Gene Davis Superficially, your work seems to be concerned with Your paintings are actions, without involving gesture or
Raspberry icicle 1967 system, but it is really intuitive? other overtly dramatic devices. At the same time, they
acrylic on unsized canvas
Yes. I never plan more than four or five stripes ahead, and aren't inert; they aren't objects; the role of the viewer is
10x 20 ft
sometimes I change my mind before I get to the fourth surely to engage with what is happening in them, in their
Fischbach Gallery, New York
stripe. To give you an idea of the kind of tightrope walk- individual colour dynamics. There's no easy way into
ing involved in my concept, imagine the number of them ?
decisions necessary for half-inch stripes on a canvas Let me consider the matter of action for a minute. I'm
measuring ten by twenty feet-some five hundred stripes told by some people that my paintings seem to weave in
in all. Working with acrylic on unsized canvas as I do, and out of space; but this is not a conscious design of
each decision must be the correct one; I cannot change mine. Space as such doesn't interest me; only colour. For
the colour of a stripe once it is painted. You might say it's me, the essential rhythms of the paintings are lateral-
a kind of artistic Russian roulette. rhythms in a single plane.
Jacob Kainen, my early mentor, has described my paint-
You mention size. What obliges you to paint as large as ing as motor-progressive. While he's obviously taking
ten by twenty feet? How does size or scale fit into your some liberties with the expression, I know what he means.
concept? You've escaped from easel painting, but where to? Music and literature are both motor-progressive expres-
Generally, large scale calls for large treatment. I'm just sion; you cannot experience the whole work at once;
perverse enough to want to cover a vast area with small there is a beginning and an end.
forms. Essentially, I'm attracted to the ambiguity of
feeling created by this combination.
Is there a beginning and an end to your paintings ?
Yes. My paintings can be read from left to right or from
And orchestrated by colour- that is, by hue?
right to left. In fact, it doesn't matter where one starts;
It's the colour that gives the painting its almost excru-
the notion is progression, even by way of monotony.
ciating complexity. This complexity is basic to what I'm
trying to say. At the risk of protesting too much, I'll say
that my work is striving toward more and more intricacy You live and work as a painter in Washington, D.C., and
when more and more painters are moving toward simpli- for better or worse have become associated in many minds
fied form. Unless the viewer takes the time to roam around with the scene there, as one of the so-called Washington
in my world, he'll miss the point of my pictures. You can't colour painters. What importance have Washington and
see my paintings in one glance, or even in two or three. its associations had in your development?