These paintings by Ray Parker were completed in the very late 60s and into the mid 70s.  Parker’s earlier work had a ballsy reductivism; a stark, binary sensibility that is missing here. While these paintings are also characteristically reductive they have a refinement bordering on pure design. For oil paintings it’s interesting that they read like acrylics. Yet the common thread running through all of Parker’s work is the supreme importance that composition takes on which is equally evident with this body of work.  In particular, these paintings also pick up on the same qualities that influenced Matisse’s very late work - the cutout series - at least for the simplicity and flat colorful graphic handling of the forms.

Ray Parker, Untitled, 1971, oil on canvas, 60 x 84 in

Ray Parker, Untitled (for Caroline), 1975, oil on canvas, 21 x 19.75 in

Ray Parker, Both Drawings: Untitled, c. 1970, ink on paper, 8 x 9 in