Ray Hamilton (1919-1996) was born in Anderson County, South Carolina and grew up on a farm. He served in the Navy during World War II. After the war he moved to New York City and in the late 1970's Hamilton was admitted to a state-run adult home in Brooklyn. Hamilton did not begin to draw until 1982, when Mark Davis, a visiting artist, introduced him to the red, green, and blue ball-point pens that became his trademark. Lyle Rexer wrote in the book "American Self Taught" (Knopf), "Hamilton often worked without models, drawing his animals from imagination and rural memories. He was also apt to trace objects immediately at hand like fruit or table ware, and many times even his hands and feet. These shapes he filled in with compulsively scored lines until the shapes, shimmering and dynamic, took on a weight and life of their own." Through the pressure of the pens his marks embossed the paper with images that look like a cross between Bill Traylor and Donald Baechler. Hamilton's work is distinctive because of its natural and unpredictable compositional sense, the kind that can't be taught. In 1990 Hamilton suffered a stroke, but he continued to produce a large body of work using his opposite hand. These later works, mainly watercolors, focused on color employing a new lighter touch, but still retained his sure line and uncanny compositions. Made less mobile by a stroke, Hamilton exercised an inspiring sense of freedom within an 11 x 14 inch piece of paper.

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