Born in Nebraska, Dan Christensen was inspired to become a painter after seeing a work by Jackson Pollock while in his teens. In 1965 he moved to New York to pursue painting his own work. During this time, he began to reject the realist style that had been the roots of his classical training at the Kansas City Art Institute. He freed himself from the confines of realism by beginning to execute works using paint spray guns to draw overlapping color loops on canvas; these works brought him critical acclaim in the New York art world.

Christensen would try other innovative painting techniques throughout his career, but his primary focus was always the color and the interaction of colors in his work, not the process of painting. He worked various modern styles including Color Field painting (a style characterized by large areas of solid color executed in a very flat manner to create a smooth picture plane) and lyrical abstraction (an intuitive and spontaneous form of abstract painting that in America often made use of newer technologies), but his use of color is what unites all of his work.

Do-Si-Do is a work from late in his career but shows his career long obsession with color. The circular shapes in the painting are less of a focus than the vibrant color; the brightness of the yellow with the white becomes the subject/focal point of the work.