Adam's Rib 1980

Gene Davis made this work, 'Adam's Rib,' with watercolor and graphite on paper. The stripes of color, lavender, grey and blue-black, stand upright in a disciplined row. I can almost feel Gene Davis in front of his paper, carefully mixing his colors, testing them, and then decisively drawing each vertical line. I imagine he was trying to keep his hand steady, to allow the watercolor to pool in some places and run in others, creating subtle variations within the regularity of the stripes. Did he work on one color at a time, or did he alternate? I bet he used a small brush, maybe a number 4 round, just enough to hold the right amount of water and pigment. The way the colors blend and bleed into one another suggests a kind of permeability, a softness that contrasts with the rigid structure. It makes me think about Agnes Martin’s grids and how those lines created a space for quiet contemplation. Davis's work is part of an ongoing artistic conversation about repetition, color, and form, that makes painting so endlessly fascinating.