The spontaneous, expressive compositions of the San Francisco, California artist Raymond Saunders remind us of the power of the abstracted image in art. The heightened sensitivity that Saunders achieves provides an intriguing optical illusion in the modernist tradition. The fluid compositional structures he invents float across the surface of the paper and provide immediate satisfaction for the viewer by engaging the senses and elevating our intellect. The delicate floral images found in four out of the five works drift across white space accompanied by the splatters of the artist’s brush. Beautiful and ghostlike in their transparent washes of color, they embody the essence of art in its purest form. Texture is balanced with an erudite palette that solidifies these fleeting impressions with a narrative voice that grounds us in a purely visual experience and speaks to viewers of all cultures.
Raymond Saunders currently works in a variety of media but is primarily renowned for his work encompassing painting and transversal media juxtaposition. He often incorporates collage, chalked words and other elements in his works that add additional texture to his art. He is a Professor of painting at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California who has donated his time to help “spread the Visual process of art” to many communities throughout the world. He has had numerous solo and group exhibitions and is in many important collections of art including the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (San Francisco, California), Bank of America (San Francisco, California), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania),
the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, California), Hunter College (New York, New York), Howard University (Washington, D.C.), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, New York), the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum (San Francisco, California), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, California), the Museum of Modern Art (New York, New York), the Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, California), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, California), the Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, California), the Walker Art Center, (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, New York).
