When did you start your creative practice and why?
I don’t believe that human beings split into two camps – artists and non-artists. Mark
making is primeval and we have all done it, like most artists and creatives I imagine I
just carried it on into adulthood. In my case painting has been my most steadfast,
lifelong companion. So it’s difficult to say when it started, but as a serious or full time
artist I suppose it was after retirement from my previous career in the fire and rescue
service when I finally had the time I felt it needed.
That part of the question is the easy bit but when it comes to why it becomes
extremely difficult and it’s a question I have asked myself time and time again –
painting is such an integral part of me that it’s almost on a par with breathing! I
create art because I have to. Nothing to do with business, I am driven to do it and I’m
miserable when I am not doing it, and I suppose part of that is wanting to get my art
seen by others – so they can see what I can see or how I can see. If I’m honest with
myself though there is also a part of me that wants to do it to get better each time I
pick up a brush. I’m always up for a challenge.
What themes or ideas I often return too?
Although my artistic output has evolved over the last twenty years since I started I
have realised there are definitely certain ideas and motifs I come back to. Some
objects seem to draw me back such as coffee pots and glassware in still life work (I
think it’s the shiny surfaces) and gates in a landscape, but whatever the genre – and
I paint a fairly wide range of them it is always, always the light that draws me to an
image or idea. I think I’m addicted to dramatic lighting and contrasts and chiaroscuro
and contre jour. Doesn’t matter what the picture is that’s how I like to depict it, I find
it’s the one overriding thing that breathes real life into an image.
Who are the artists who have strongly influenced you?
The list gets ever longer and is always changing with time. Apart from the old
masters who surely influence everybody – the likes of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet
and Picasso (I would also add Hockney to that list in my case) – modern or current
artists depend to some extent on the genre;
Still life – Estelle Day, Jeffery Larson, Ans Debije
Figures – Paula Rego, Jenny Saville, Hopper, Sargent
Landscape – Jen Aitken, Colin Halliday, Hockney again,
Do you ever get creative blocks?
I can’t imagine any artist that’s not familiar with this. To begin with I never like to face
an unblemished blank white canvas so I will usually deface it in some way quite
haphazardly with left over paint the day before. Sometimes I like to leave the marks
in the finished painting, but they always help me and ease me gently into my normal
working rhythm. Outside of that I’ve come to expect that my creative juices will ebb
and flow naturally so I try not to force myself out of a lull, busying myself with admin
or clearing the studio often helps, as does poring over the countless photographs
and objects that I keep for inspiration. No magic solution though, it happens – and
you don’t get the peaks without the troughs.
What is your desired reaction in viewers?
One of my pet hates is art that tries too much, whether that’s just to be radical or to
shock. Either way if it’s unnecessary don’t do it – that said I do like innovation and
the unexpected though. But generally I would be happy/satisfied if observers of my
work left it feeling a bit “lifted” – to borrow from my own artist statement “my abiding
desire is that, like music, art might serve to engender a greater sense of wellbeing –
in observer and creator alike. At its best I believe art can and should be a simple and
joyful emotional experience as well as a vehicle for asking more difficult and
fundamental questions about what it means to be human.”
I will settle for that!
Where can we find your artwork?
My portfolio can be viewed at www.martindavis.art
and my ongoing work on Instagram at @mrdartist
