Ian Davis paints symmetrical, orderly scenes that he never fully plans. He paints a scene, paints over it, and begins again. The finished images look polished, but the process behind these ian davis paintings is slow, messy and deliberately uncertain.
Davis fills his canvases with nondescript characters, often male, whom he calls “actors.” Viewers rarely learn what those actors are supposed to do. They seem to be on the brink of chaos or recoiling from its aftermath.
Davis has said the lack of clear meaning in ian davis paintings is intentional. He has described it as the “nonsense of it all.” When interviewed, he also set a limit on his own explanations: “Nothing I say here can apply to every painting I make.”
The labor behind the order
Davis has worked on this body of work for two decades. Much of that time goes to labor-intensive painting and repainting. He has described the pieces as “cobbled together,” even though the final images show clear intention and skill.
That tension raises a practical question. How does an artist relate to the workers in his paintings while he toils over them, repainting each figure across the panels?
“My relationship to labor is probably very Midwestern,” Davis says. He grew up in Indiana, where he says being an artist did not count as a real job. He recalls people dismissing art with familiar lines, including being asked to explain why a Barnett Newman painting sold for millions of dollars.
Davis’s talk of a painting that makes sense only in part echoes how large canvases can overwhelm the viewer, as in Rothko, Newman and Bo Bardi’s Large Canvases for a look at scale and visual force.
Davis now lives in Los Angeles and exhibits ian davis paintings internationally. He says he is “generally stressing out” about finishing pieces. Time, physical labor and dozens of small decisions all shape each work. Deadlines are hard to set, he says, because “it’s hard to estimate how long something might take if you don’t know what that something is.”
Characters who don’t know why they are there
The people in ian davis paintings rarely work hard, by his account. “They’ve shown up, but they don’t know why, or they’ve gotten the wrong assignment,” he says. He is willing to analyze them only to a point.
Davis has called his method “inefficient.” He insists the inefficiency is not a goal in itself. “It’s just a factor in the way that I work,” he says.
He rejects planning as a shortcut to finished work. “I wouldn’t want to simply plan a painting and then draw and color it in,” he says. “This to me doesn’t feel like making art. It feels like making expensive decorations.”
Davis also compares his studio to a childhood room rather than an office. “I want it to feel like a kid’s bedroom,” he says. “It’s a private place for figuring things out.”
Optimism, and what changed since 2016
In a 2016 interview with artnet, Davis said he wanted to find an “alternate head space” from which to conceive his work. He said then that he hoped to move toward optimism. Asked recently whether he had succeeded, he described a “slow evolution” rather than an arrival.
The subjects of his ian davis paintings, he explains, moved from speculative to “a little too on-the-nose” as real events grew stranger and more frightening. He began to worry that his paintings would feel too topical, so he made them weirder and harder to read. Power, resources and greed had become things he could see directly, not things he feared might happen.
Davis believes the underlying themes are older than any headline. “People have been greedy and vain and all these things forever,” he says.
For readers who enjoy paintings that blur dream and reality without offering a tidy answer, Fedor Barkhatov’s Ethereal Surreal Visual Narratives shows how ambiguous scenes can carry emotional weight.
Water, symbols and ian davis paintings
Water recurs throughout his ian davis paintings, from indoor swimming pools to massive ocean liners. Davis says he values its many meanings. “Floods are also biblical, but are also urgent and relevant as a warning,” he says. Pools, by contrast, represent “the harnessing of water.” He also paints water for formal reasons, such as the chance to use a particular color or to render reflections.
Many viewers read an American sensibility into the scenes. Davis accepts that he cannot escape it. “I can’t help having an American sensibility because that is how I’m conditioned,” he says. He adds that the situations he depicts apply to people elsewhere, and that the figures “aren’t ‘Americans‘ per se.”
He describes his aim as a balance between beauty and menace. “My favorite things are beautiful but have a bit of darkness,” he says. He compares the effect to “Forever Changes” by Love, a record he hears as a model for how his paintings should sound.
Describing without explaining
Davis rarely asks what a painting is about, even when he looks at other artists‘ work. “I have to assume that some people look at my work the same way,” he says. “Other people want things explained. I think I’ve done a pretty good job ‘describing’ but I’m not explaining.”
Visitors who want a fixed answer will not find one in these paintings. Davis offers a different path: remain perplexed. In his account, that uncertainty is the condition that makes new ideas possible.
Source: hifructose.com
Frequently asked questions
Does Ian Davis plan his paintings before he starts painting?
No, Ian Davis does not fully plan his paintings and often paints over a scene and starts again. He rejects planning as a shortcut, saying he wouldn’t want to plan a painting and then simply draw and color it in.
How long has Ian Davis worked on his current body of paintings?
Ian Davis has worked on this body of work for two decades. Much of that time goes to labor-intensive painting and repainting.
Is the meaning of Ian Davis’s paintings intentionally unclear?
Yes, Davis has said the lack of clear meaning in his paintings is intentional, and he has described it as the “nonsense of it all.” Viewers rarely learn what the figures in his scenes are supposed to be doing.
Why does Ian Davis’s work include so much water?
Water recurs in his paintings, and Davis values its many meanings. He says floods are both biblical and a warning, while pools represent the harnessing of water, and he also paints water for formal reasons like color and reflections.
More in
Art
All Art
