Graham Davis
Graham Davis is an Australian artist. Born in Mount lsa, he grew up in Western and Northern Queensland. His art practice is now based in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. A large amount of his creative life was spent as an architect in Queensland. He won awards at state level endeavouring to bring as much art as possible into place making during this period. Significant periods spent in Papua New Guinea and Libya have provided enriching opportunities for artistic engagement and practice. He continues to ‘mine’ these experiences for inspiration. Sense of location, landscape and people provide the base for his art practice.
Painting and Drawing
Whether translucent glossy multi layered oil abstracts or the dense impasto oil and exaggerated panel proportions of Graham's paintings, his bold colourist approach is strikingly evident. He also uses coloured inks, gouache and pastel to explore colour intensity and light transparency. His imagery is variously abstract, semi abstract and figurative sometimes. Expressive monochromatic ink and brush drawing has featured prominently in his art practice.
The Images
“My work is founded in processing visual and sensual perceptions of the world around us to include trees, people, buildings, what's under my feet, mountains, oceans, animals, views and vistas. It involves working those observations and investigations to produce sensual, focused and colour infused depictions of places, activities, spaces and atmospheres wherever they may be”.
Intelligibility and Giving Names to Works
“I prefer works to be intelligible and to communicate by evoking emotional or feeling responses in the viewer. Hopefully viewers can enjoy image play associations while deciphering the work. Whether it is colour, drawing, subject or other idea association involved, words can be used to form very brief onomatopoeic or poetic essays to further describe the work. I like to use the image - title combination in a short punchy way to embed the work in a cultural, place or time related context that has meaning to me.”
