Phantom Tattoo
Davis began making paintings of stripes in the late-fifties, when much of painting was created with expressive gestures like flinging and dripping. He made crisp, hard-edged paintings, which he purposefully made as neat as possible by using masking tape. “It was like a breath of fresh air,” said Davis, describing how his straight-and-narrow color bands forged a new artistic direction in an art scene dominated by “messy” paintings.