Turner G. Davis
September 2006
THE BUZZ
January 2007 kicks off what will be a seminal two years for 35-year-old Turner G. Davis. That month, Riva Yares Gallery, a fixture in Scottsdale since 1964, is scheduled to mount a joint exhibition of Davis’ oils on canvas alongside paintings by his father, James G. Davis, whose works can be seen nationally in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of Art, and internationally at the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin. In autumn 2007, the
University of Arizona Art Museum in Tuscon has scheduled a survey exhibition of Davis’ major works in the artist’s first solo museum show; his second solo show is scheduled for winter 2008 at the West Valley Art Museum in Phoenix. Not a bad run for this self-professed existentialist who adapted his mantra from Graham Greene: “Because life is ridiculous there is reason for hope in every day.”
DESCRIPTION OF WORKS
Davis’ narrative paintings and drawings, often cast with a child protagonist, are ruled by dichotomies: horror/laughter and maturity/ innocence. “My work can be seen as a dialogue between an adult and a child: The adult needs the energy and spontaneity of the child; the child needs the protection and ritual of the adult,” explains Davis, who notes his pieces simultaneously evoke amusement and trepidation. “Surrealism, which Davis uses as his method, is interested in the place of unknown mystery between the forces of creation and destruction,” explains Terrance Lindall, director of the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn and curator of the 2003 Surrealist exhibition “Brave Destiny.” “Transformation and growth is a necessary condition of consciousness, and this is what he is striving for in his movement toward a deeper understanding of the motivations, perceptions, experiences of the human species. What we see in his examples is a method of mediation and renewal of vision—destroying the logic of what we have come to believe and pressing the need to continually derive fresh new meanings from the world around us.”
INSPIRATIONS
As the only child of two artists—his mother taught high school art—Davis grew up in
Rancho Linda Vista, an artists’ community outside Oracle, Arizona, and also traveled with his parents, exploring museums throughout the world. He began working in his father’s studio at age 6, cleaning the brushes and etching plates, an experience that taught him the serious work ethic an artist must have to make a living. This sensibility served him well while a master’s student at the
Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and as he strived to get his work noticed. “People assume there is a certain amount of entitlement when a parent is a well-known artist, but that is not the case,” he says when asked about how he has been perceived in light of his father’s accomplishments. “There are ties because we’re father and son, but in terms of our work, we have separate, but parallel, journeys,” explains Davis, who when not painting devours writings by authors like Milan Kundera and Albert Camus, and studies such diverse talent as Balthus, Goya, Turner, Orozco, Titian, Manet, Magritte, John Currin, Bruce Nauman, George Condo, Diane Arbus and Roberto Márquez. He also draws subject matter from his wife, Theone, and their three children.
VARIETY OF TECHNIQUES
“While still an ‘emerging’ artist, Davis demonstrates the inventive capacity and range of accomplishment one expects in a mature career. He is unusually prolific and elastic in his practice—experimental in terms of style, medium and technique, and in terms of the characters and situations he renders so imaginatively,” says Lisa Fishman, chief curator of the University of Arizona Art Museum, who arranged the survey exhibition to explore Davis’ diversity. “Each medium I use has a unique voice and purpose. By mixing these voices you get a chorus,” explains Davis, who employs, among other media, acrylic, oil, graphite, ink, gouache and willow charcoal on anything from canvas and paper to suede and muslin. In preparation for the exhibitions, he is working on about seven series consisting of larger works (paintings 60" x 60" to 70" x 70") and smaller pieces, which will be displayed in what he calls “clusters.”
January 2007 kicks off what will be a seminal two years for 35-year-old Turner G. Davis. That month, Riva Yares Gallery, a fixture in Scottsdale since 1964, is scheduled to mount a joint exhibition of Davis’ oils on canvas alongside paintings by his father, James G. Davis, whose works can be seen nationally in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of Art, and internationally at the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin. In autumn 2007, the
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"The Gift," 2006, oil on canvas, 70" x 65". |
DESCRIPTION OF WORKS
Davis’ narrative paintings and drawings, often cast with a child protagonist, are ruled by dichotomies: horror/laughter and maturity/ innocence. “My work can be seen as a dialogue between an adult and a child: The adult needs the energy and spontaneity of the child; the child needs the protection and ritual of the adult,” explains Davis, who notes his pieces simultaneously evoke amusement and trepidation. “Surrealism, which Davis uses as his method, is interested in the place of unknown mystery between the forces of creation and destruction,” explains Terrance Lindall, director of the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in Brooklyn and curator of the 2003 Surrealist exhibition “Brave Destiny.” “Transformation and growth is a necessary condition of consciousness, and this is what he is striving for in his movement toward a deeper understanding of the motivations, perceptions, experiences of the human species. What we see in his examples is a method of mediation and renewal of vision—destroying the logic of what we have come to believe and pressing the need to continually derive fresh new meanings from the world around us.”
INSPIRATIONS
As the only child of two artists—his mother taught high school art—Davis grew up in
Rancho Linda Vista, an artists’ community outside Oracle, Arizona, and also traveled with his parents, exploring museums throughout the world. He began working in his father’s studio at age 6, cleaning the brushes and etching plates, an experience that taught him the serious work ethic an artist must have to make a living. This sensibility served him well while a master’s student at the
 |
"David and Goliath," 2006, |
VARIETY OF TECHNIQUES
“While still an ‘emerging’ artist, Davis demonstrates the inventive capacity and range of accomplishment one expects in a mature career. He is unusually prolific and elastic in his practice—experimental in terms of style, medium and technique, and in terms of the characters and situations he renders so imaginatively,” says Lisa Fishman, chief curator of the University of Arizona Art Museum, who arranged the survey exhibition to explore Davis’ diversity. “Each medium I use has a unique voice and purpose. By mixing these voices you get a chorus,” explains Davis, who employs, among other media, acrylic, oil, graphite, ink, gouache and willow charcoal on anything from canvas and paper to suede and muslin. In preparation for the exhibitions, he is working on about seven series consisting of larger works (paintings 60" x 60" to 70" x 70") and smaller pieces, which will be displayed in what he calls “clusters.”
“I think of Davis’ oeuvre as incandescent fairy tales rendered through the distorting lens of adulthood, possessed of clear-eyed innocence in tension with the equivocating force of a darker imagination,” Fishman says. “This sense of powerful forces in tension, and of surprise forged therein, are the signature characteristics of his work. His images, whether Baroquely designed, lavishly layered and finished, or intentionally simplistic, suggest transmutation, sleights of hand and cloaked truths; a world of little jokes and mysteries, of childlike wonder tinged with Gothic nightmare.”
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