RONALD DAVIS: THE POLAR SERIES March 6 - 31, 2026
Ronald Davis
These discs of brilliant and confounding color are alluringly tactile. There is an itch in the palm, a desire to smooth one’s hand over the curved edges of the tondos, across their abstract, colorful geometries. The rounded edges and glossy surfaces underscore the lived experience of Ronald Davis’s last series of work, The Polar Series, as objects rather than, in a more classical and rarified sense, paintings. Mounted atop diamond shaped canvases, the inner tondos tug at the viewer, zeroing one’s vision center-ward with their bullseye-like attraction. Charlotte Jackson Fine Art is honored to present a selection of pieces from Ronald Davis’s final body of work, The Polar Series, including the very last painting that Davis completed a few days before his death, Timer. We tend to freight last’s (words, books, works) with an especial level of meaning that might not always be warranted. However, it is difficult to look at Timer and not see a sort of cipher, a work of art where all of Davis’s accumulated insights, tools, and affinities are on display. With its alternating stripes of blue and orange to one side, green and orange to the other, the piece is split by a wider, bifurcated band between them. In this off-center band a very Ronald Davis brand of illusion comes into play - using nested shapes and color value in the lower portion to create the impression of depth, where blues deepen to dark blue-green, and using classical two-point perspective above to create a sort of doorway of red onto a vista of green. Set strikingly against its black diamond background, the whole is composed of opposites coming into and out of balance.
The Polar Series is the result of a return to painting by Davis beginning in June of 2021. At that point he had not painted on canvas for about 15 years, focused instead primarily on his computer generated Pixel Dust works. Davis’s initial foray with a rectangular format quickly shifted when, as he says, “as I worked, the desire to “find the center” became my mission.” He drew inspiration from a 1963 tondo, Target, which with its alternate-colored, light and dark bullseye seemed an apt format to explore, as he puts it, the “opposite poles of light-dark, black-white, up-down.” Davis holds an important space in the history of art in the 20th century with his perceptionbending use of perspective and exploration of cutting-edge technologies. His use of perspective to “excavate walls” ran contrary to the post-modernist predilection for emphasizing the flatness of the two-dimensional painting surface. However, as Davis said in a quote from the 1980’s, via art writer Penny Hawks: “I embrace the traditions of 20th century abstract painting. In fact, I have always remained in the Clement Greenberg dialogue of post-painterly abstraction. I have also been influenced by minimalism. But the emptiness of classical minimalism was never enough for me, nor were Clem’s theatrical axioms. I had to make it beautiful.” The use of a second, diamond canvas to “frame” the inner tondos of the Polar Series seems, at first, almost to undercut the very work that Davis did as part of the post-modern project to unhook painting from its formal framing. But in fact, as Davis himself noted, these mountings manage, with an almost humorous, Duchampian eye-wink, to widen that gap.
As he says, “I mounted the circles on square backings tipped 45 degrees as diamonds, to better define their objecthood...” This choice is itself a part of the complex interweaving of paradoxes that run throughout The Polar Series. Warm versus cool, high energy versus low energy, flat versus deep, curved versus squared. These opposites interact, war, and at times resolve within each piece. These works seem ultimately to be as much about the science and experience of human perceptions as they are about the history and technology of art-making. This is the multifaceted and unsettled truth of human life, the realm of experience that the poet Keats dubbed “negative capability.” And yet what these paintings do is take that richness of seeming conflict and irresolution and to refine it. To unfold the convoluted not by solving it, but by illuminating it. Here is, perhaps, where that “beauty” Davis strived for arises. As David Hickey so aptly put it in his essay, “Ronald Davis Is Not Doing What You’re Seeing” from 2015: “The idea is not to seduce but to render something complex plain.” This, more than anything, when combined with another quote from Ronald Davis, seems to form the perfect cipher and epitaph for Davis’s body of work, and in particular the pieces presented here in The Polar Series. “I am but a box in time and space. I am content to become one with the cosmos.” - Michaela Kahn, PhD
Max Verstappen, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 42.5 x 42.5 inches
Timer, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 42.5 x 42.5 inches
Carlos Sainz, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 56.5 x 56.5 inches
Polar Top, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches
Yuki Tsunoda, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 42.5 x 42.5 inches
Strait and Narrow, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 68 x 68 inches
Frank Stella - RIP, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 56.5 x 56.5 inches
Radiant, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 34 inches
Green Square in Black, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 28.5 x 28.5 inches
Yellow Block on Blue, 2024, acrylic on PVC on canvas, 25.5 x 25.5 inches
Blue-Green with Zips, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 28.5 x 28.5 inches
Max Verstappen, 2023 acrylic on canvas 42.5 x 42.5 in. ROND150 Click to inquire about this work
$12,000
Polar Top, 2024 acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 in. ROND152 Click to inquire about this work
$20,000
Timer, 2025 acrylic on canvas 42.5 x 42.5 in. ROND148 Click to inquire about this work
$12,000
Yuki Tsunoda, 2024 acrylic on canvas 42.5 x 42.5 in. ROND153 Click to inquire about this work
$12,000
Carlos Sainz, 2024 acrylic on canvas 56.5 x 56.5 in. ROND151 Click to inquire about this work
$18,000
Strait and Narrow, 2023 acrylic on canvas 68 x 68 in. ROND159 Click to inquire about this work
$22,000
Frank Stella - RIP, 2024 acrylic on canvas 56.5 x 56.5 in. ROND149 Click to inquire about this work
$18,000
Yellow Block on Blue, 2024 acrylic on PVC on canvas 25.5 x 25.5 in. ROND155 Click to inquire about this work
$4,750
Radiant, 2024 acrylic on canvas 34 x 34 in. ROND157 Click to inquire about this work
$8,000
Blue-Green with Zips, 2024 acrylic on canvas 28.5 x 28.5 in. ROND154 Click to inquire about this work
$6,000
Green Square in Black, 2023 acrylic on canvas 28.5 x 28.5 in. ROND158 Click to inquire about this work
$6,000
Born: 1937 in Santa Monica, CA Education: 1955-56 1960-64
Studied at University of Wyoming Studied Painting at San Francisco Art Institute
Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2026 The Polar Series, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2023 Ronald Davis – The Paintings: 1960S Through 2010, David Richard Gallery, New York, NY 2022 Early Optical, Shaped and Color Abstractions: Paintings 1963 - 1965, David Richard Gallery, New York, NY 2021 Ronald Davis – Seven Decades, 203 Fine Art, Taos, NM 2015 Ronald Davis – The Paintings: 1960S Through 2010, Hulse-Warman Gallery, Taos, NM 2014 Unidentified Floating Objects, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2012 Pixel Dust Renderings, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2010 Squares and Diamonds, Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico Ronald Davis: Monochrome Painting from the 60’s, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, New York 2008 Paintings, 1966-2007, New Gallery - Tom Andriola, Houston, Texas Ronald Davis, President’s Rooms, Eight Modern, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2007 Ronald Davis: Five Decades: Past and Present Work, 1968 – 2007, Electric Works, San Francisco, California 2006 Pixel Dust Paintings, New Gallery - Tom Andriola, Houston, Texas Music Series: 1983-1985, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico 2002 Forty Years of Abstraction: 1962-2002, Butler Institute Museum of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (major 40-painting career survey) Nushapes, Hinges, Diamonds; Digital Painting Series, Victoria Meyhren Gallery, Denver University, Denver, Colorado 1998 Wax Series 1996-97, Jaquelin Loyd Gallery, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico 1991 Large Sculpture; Hondo Hogan and aspen wood sculptures, BlumHelman Los Angeles, Santa Monica, California 1988 Spiral Series, BlumHelman New York, New York 1985 Silkscreens, Acetates, & Drawings, Graystone, San Francisco, California 1984 The Flatlanders, Thomas Babeor Gallery, La Jolla, California 1983 Bungalow Show/Small Paintings; Splatters, Asher/Faure, Los Angeles, California 1982 Selected Works 1968 – 1982, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, California 1981 Etchings, Drypoints, & Aquatints, Gemini G. E. L., Los Angeles, California 1979 Floaters, Middendorf/Lane Gallery, Washington, D. C. 1978 Checkerboard Floored, BlumHelman Gallery, New York City, New York 1977 Snap Lines, Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California 1976 Retrospective: Paintings: 1962-1976, The Oakland Museum, Oakland, California 1974 Snap Line Series, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City, New York
1973 1972 1971 1970 1969 1968 1967 1966 1965
Gemini G. E. L., Los Angeles, California Still Life Series, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City, New York Galleria Dell‘Ariete, Milano, Italy Dodecagons, Pyramids, David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Rectangle Series, Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, California Cutout Series, Kasmin Gallery, London, England Dodecagons, Crabs, and Slabs, Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Canada Dodecagon Series, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City, New York Crab Series, Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California Slab Series, Tibor De Nagy Gallery, New York City, New York Monochromatic Series, Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Selected Collections: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, TN The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH Carnation Corporation, Los Angeles, CA The City Art Museum of St. Louis, St. Louis, MO Corcoran Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D. C. Denver Art Museum, Denver, C) Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Guggenheim Museum, New York City, NY Harwood Museum, Taos, NM HHK Foundation for Contemporary Art, Milwaukee, WI The Hillcrest Foundation, Los Angeles, CA Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D. C. Hughes Aircraft Company, Los Angeles, CA List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles, CA The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, (MCASD), San Diego, CA National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA Nickle Art Museum, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA The Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA San José Museum of Art, San José, CA Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Security Pacific Bank, Los Angeles, CA Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, NE The Tate Gallery, London, England Walraff-Richartz Museum, Cologne, Germany Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY Witt Museum, San Antonio, TX Woodward Foundation, Washington, D. C.
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