Paul Kocak writes:
His New Yorker covers of the 1970s are quintessential reflections of urban complexity distilled to a serene and sober simplicity. A Zen focus of particularity, here and now. His spot drawings for The New Yorker, signed “R. Davidson,” celebrated Manhattan archways, doorways, a flowerpot on a windowsill, a wrought-iron fence. Raymond Davidson died just after midnight on July 7 at Tara Home, a hospice at Land of Medicine Buddha in Soquel, California. He was creative almost until his very last days, self-publishing poetry and reflections sprinkled with his pen-and-ink line drawings.
We met in the 1980s; he worked at Doubleday, I at Random House. Creativity was, in his view, a spiritual wellspring. He urged me to write haiku poetry as a spiritual exercise. I did.
In those years, fans of the New York Mets often saw a man with a long gray beard and glasses, wearing a seersucker jacket and bow tie, sitting in owner Nelson Doubleday’s box, right next to the Mets’ dugout. He was painting watercolors of the Mets players. These were exquisite depictions of light and shadow and color; balletic celebrations of form and grace and movement. They are gems.
They are New York.
They are Raymond Davidson, Brooklyn-born of Norwegian immigrants more than eighty years ago.
When the woman at the hospice told me of Raymond’s peaceful death, she said he looked like someone in an El Greco painting. Yes, majestic and heavenly.
She said he was “easy to love,” a fitting signature to his life and work. Raymond Davidson easily loved the ordinary right before our eyes.
I easily loved him like a father and a brother.
Paul Kocak
Syracuse, New York