Untitled 1975

This untitled piece by Gene Davis looks like it was made with pencil and crayon on paper. I love how the drawing feels like a sketch, a moment of thought caught in lines and blocks of color. The pink crayon marks, one a bold stripe down the left, the other a diagonal slash, contrast with the geometric maze that dominates the lower right. That maze, drawn with a pale yellow pencil, is so meticulous, yet it's overlaid with these spontaneous flicks of colored pencil. It’s like the artist is having a conversation between order and chaos, planning and accident. The surface has this lovely, raw quality. You can see the texture of the paper, the unevenness of the crayon strokes. It reminds me a bit of early Brice Marden drawings, but with a pop sensibility. Ultimately, it's in this dance between the deliberate and the accidental that Davis really shines, turning a simple sketch into a window into his process.