Ray Parker: Paintings from the 1970s
March 4 through April 17, 2004

From 1962, occasionally, and for good in 1965, I got over the inborn American distaste for shape consciousness and the fear that drawing could be corny, which caused us to use anything but the traditional means to paint on the canvas. I had made the simple paintings by applying the paint with rags. Quitting the myth that a painter must be innocent of the artifice of art freed me of the limits and rules I had made for myself for color and field. Now I could make a screwy shape, even a line! Color, yes! Field, yes! Elaborate shapes, lateral movements, changing speeds, changing speeds, multiple rhythms (once more) Yes! Anything, yes! And withal, these new paintings are simple and direct. —Ray Parker, 1975