Solar Skin 1964

Gene Davis made this stripe painting, Solar Skin, with acrylic on canvas. It's a real eye-popper with its vertical lines of pure, unmodulated color. I love to think about how each stripe is a record of a single, deliberate action, the making of a single mark repeated over and over. The surface has this wonderful flatness, a testament to Davis’s technique. He built up the colors in thin, even layers, so the canvas feels almost like it’s been dyed. Looking closely, you can see where one color bumps up against the next, creating these subtle vibrations. The pink stripe on the right is particularly interesting. It's not just pink; it’s got this slight warmth, a hint of red that makes it glow like a summer sunset. Davis, like Kenneth Noland, was super invested in color. You might also think about Josef Albers, with his dedication to the study of color relationships. But Davis, for me, has a kind of joyous energy, a celebration of color for color’s sake. It's a reminder that painting can be as simple and as complex as the act of putting one color next to another.