Untitled 1970

Ray Parker made this “Untitled” painting with luscious acrylics and a real yen for bold color. I'm imagining Parker, probably with a brush loaded with cadmium yellow, making the painting in one go. The yellow feels like a stage, on which the red, brown, green, and lavender shapes move, dance, or even collide. This piece feels like it’s in conversation with the work of other color field painters like Helen Frankenthaler. I am really drawn to the two lavender marks to the left. They look like attenuated teardrops or oddly shaped commas, and I wonder if those were the first marks made, the first move in a series of decisions. The way they reach up toward the top of the canvas, as if pointing to the floating, vertical line. There’s a confidence here, a sense of play, and it reminds me that painting, at its heart, is a conversation across time and space. Each artist responds to, and builds upon, what has come before.