Untitled
c. 1933
Acrylic, chalk, collage, and mixed media on canvas

In his works, American artist Raymond Saunders (b. 1934) brings together his extensive formal training with his own observations and lived experience. His assemblage-style paintings frequently begin with a monochromatic black ground elaborated with white chalk—both a pointed reversal of the traditional figure ground relationship and a nod to Saunders's decades spent as a teacher. He subsequently adds a range of other markings, materials, and talismans. Expressionistic swaths of paint, minimalist motifs, line drawings, and passages of vibrant color tangle with found objects, signs, and doors collected from his urban environment, creating unexpected visual rhymes and resonances that reward careful and sustained looking. At once

deliberately constructed and improvisatory, didactic and deeply felt, these richly built surfaces conjure a range of themes, allowing for a vast and nuanced multiplicity of meanings.