There’s a painting by Ray of Fra Angelico’s fresco of the “Annunciation” as seen from the bottom of the maroon-carpeted stairs in the Convent of San Marcos in Florence. By positioning the viewer at the bottom of the stairs and framing the fresco with the doorway, she initiates a dialogue between the modernist pressure toward flatness and Fra Angelico’s unsystematized evocation of space. Ray’s lopsided framing – only one side of an arched doorway is visible on the right-hand side – echoes the off-centeredness of the “Annunciation,” suggesting that the dynamic relationship between surface and space, and order and disorder, can still be discovered and personal. Ray finds a lot of these connections and echoes in her work, which adds another layer to them.
Source: For the Love of Paint