First published: Fall 1998
Ray Hamilton (1919–1996) loved to draw. For roughly 13 to 14 years, he created spare, elegant and sometimes puzzling drawings in a range of media. His subjects included animals, especially farm animals, birds, male and female figures, alone or in small groups, mundane objects, pieces of fruit, the sun, moon, stars, and sometimes numbers, lots of numbers.
A black male resident in a decrepit adult home for the mentally ill, already in his 60s, R. A. Hamilton would have seemed an unlikely candidate to become a major artist. But he did just that. Once he began to make art, he sustained his interest and developed his career until his death, even re-teaching himself to draw after a stroke.
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #24
