Ray Rogers on Gesture, Gravity, and the Ongoing Present

There is nothing nostalgic about Ray Rogers’s paintings. Standing in his upstate studio, surrounded by canvases spanning more than six decades, what you encounter is not a relic of Abstract Expressionism but a practice that has never stopped testing itself. The surfaces are alive with poured acrylic, elastic lines, and sudden chromatic tensions. They do not feel preserved. They feel immediate. [Read on]

Rogers arrived in Manhattan in the late 1950s after completing his graduate studies at UC Berkeley, where he studied with Robert Motherwell and George McNeil at a moment when abstraction was still an argument rather than history. He and his wife rented a loft at 12th Street and University Place, half home and half studio, placing themselves inside the pulse of a city redefining painting in real time.

“Some of my friends were already in New York,” he recalls. “They said, you should be here.”

After several years, he and his wife chose to leave Manhattan for the country. The city felt intense, even dangerous at times, and they wanted space to build a life. In 1961, they moved upstate, where Rogers first built a geodesic dome studio and later the larger workspace he occupies today.

The move was not a retreat from the art world but a recalibration. Being part of the New York art scene does not require a Manhattan address. It requires sustained relationships and continued work. Rogers maintains both. He remained in dialogue while working outside the city’s daily pressure.

“I did this when it was happening,” he says of Abstract Expressionism. “And I did it when it wasn’t popular.”

That continuity shapes the work.

Painting as Visual Dialogue

Rogers describes his paintings as “visual dialogues,” borrowing language from orchestral music not as romance but as structure.

“In music, different elements create a musical dialogue. In abstract painting, the different elements create a visual dialogue.”

A red against a green establishes tension. A looping line interrupts a pooled wash and recalibrates the field. Each gesture responds to another. The surface becomes relational rather than illustrative.

He works primarily on the floor, pouring and squeezing acrylic directly onto large canvases. He adds rather than subtracts. Accidents remain. A painting resolves when its internal relationships hold.

“It probably takes an hour or two,” he says. “I sit down almost out of breath.”

The work is physical. Gravity participates. Some canvases compress into dense crossings of color and line. Others remain open, allowing white passages to breathe between gestures. Across decades, density and palette shift, but the commitment to immediacy remains constant.

Integrity Over Fashion

At Berkeley, George McNeil emphasized one word: integrity.

“He didn’t like pretty paintings,” Rogers says. “He was serious.”

Integrity meant resisting decorativeness and smoothing over friction. It also meant continuing when abstraction fell in and out of critical favor. Rogers did not pivot to follow taste. He continued refining his language of gesture.

Recently, he paused production. “I felt that I had said everything I wanted to say,” he tells me. A blank canvas remains stretched in the studio, but for now he is focused on showing the body of work accumulated over time. More than sixty paintings remain in his possession, spanning from the early 1960s to the present.

Last summer, three works were shown at the Southampton Art Fair, where they found new advocates. That momentum led to Gesture in Time at Bushwick Gallery.

There is no self mythologizing in his tone. Only clarity.

“This is what it is,” he says.

The Ecosystem of a Practice

Rogers’ practice has never existed in isolation. His late wife was a pianist. The house held art and music. His daughters grew up alongside canvases and now assist with transportation, portfolios, and communication. Their respect for his studio practice is palpable. They have witnessed the decades of repetition, doubt, and persistence that sustain it.

To maintain a creative practice for this long is not simply an artistic decision but a relational one. It shapes a household. It shapes how love and discipline are expressed. That continuity surrounds the work without overshadowing it.

When I tell Rogers that the paintings feel playful and alert, he smiles. The work carries no heaviness of history. It feels curious, responsive, and alive.

The Ongoing Present

Gesture in Time is not a retrospective but a concentrated view into a sustained inquiry. The exhibition gathers works that foreground gesture as event and record. They are not illustrations of emotion, nor reenactments of a mid century language. They are the result of decades spent refining how color, line, and space speak to one another.

Rogers will be present at the opening this Thursday, 5 March, at Bushwick Gallery. The exhibition continues through 13 March and offers a rare opportunity to encounter paintings grounded in steady conviction rather than spectacle. In a moment that often equates relevance with speed, these works remind us that gesture still holds.

The dialogue continues.

→ More exhibitions and events in London, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles

For more art and travel inspiration, reviews or guides browse through our features, download the ArtRabbit App for iPhone or Android, or subscribe to one of our city-specific newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.