ABSTRACT
In 1938, Raymond Jonson began using watercolors more often than ever before. Between 1933 and 1937, he produced as few as one watercolor in 1935 and as many as eight in 1937. But in 1938, he produced thirty-two, and between 1938 and 1945, he produced as few as twenty-three in 1939 and as many as forty-one in 1945. The airbrush became crucial to Jonson's painting in 1938 and remained so for the rest of his career. Although he first used it as early as 1936 in Spiral Trilogy, he began using it regularly in 1938. He produced his airbrushed paintings of the late 1930s and 1940s with watercolor and casein tempera. Jonson's absolute paintings from the first several years after his epiphany of early 1938 demonstrate how he experimented with the enormous variety of shapes, lines, colors, textures and spaces that could express, evoke, and convey the spiritual.
