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Art, Paint + Sculpture: Artist Paul Davies
Gym Class Magazine Autumn 2012
Ingmar Apinis
Modernist homes and a bright colour palette caught our attention, but its what Australian artist Paul Davies is not showing us that has kept us interested.
If you're familiar with British Whiteread's inside-out sculptures, you'll be familiar not only with her ability to turn negative space into positive, but also her knack for exposing the private histories of these spaces. Beneath the cool exterior there's something far more haunting and emotional.
Australian artist Paul Davies mentions Whiteread as a contemporary source of inspiration for his multi-layered paintings of modernist homes within natural landscapes. The ink isn't as tenuous as you might think; Davies has a background in sculpture. Beyond that, his vivid colour palette - from pop - art fluorescence to wintry aloof- and ability to dance between faithful representation and layered abstraction also create an emotional plane for his hard-edged subject matter.
A reoccurring themes in Davies's catalogue is nature verses man-made. If you're so inclined, consider the retro- futuristic questions posed by his interest in modernist homes. But its much more open-ended and exciting to contemplate the more philosophical themes in his work. Such as the point where emotional space overlaps with physical space, where private (the home) becomes public (the landscape).
In particular, its interesting that Davies uses a two-dimensional medium to examine a practice rooted in three-dimensional medium to examine a practice rooted in three dimensionalist; architecture. When I question hum on his talks about a childhood obsession with Jeffrey Smart, whose "paintings were introduced to me by my dad. He also appreciated the artists composition, attention to detail and urban subject matter. For me the colour and perspective is most impressive, and I remember reading that, for Smart, the figure was only added to his canvases to give the scene proportion. I made many amateur sketches of his work throughout school and this has stayed with me since."
Smart's sense of colour is definitely present in Davies's work, and both artists use their palette to create mood and narrative. However, Davies's work has the added dimension of landscape, a passion born from another childhood interest in Ansel Adams.
"Painting is a process, that for me, encourages the artist to respond immediately to their surrounding environment. I often, while on research trips, make preliminary sketches and watercolours of particular buildings that interest me. These descriptions, together with photographs, provide a base for the paintings. I select images from various locations and combine them, on the canvas, to create fictitious scenes, devoid of human form, to invite the viewer to generate their own response."
As a painter, Davies also borrows stencilling techniques to create these fictitious scenes which raises questions about fine art versus urban art and art for the elite verses art for the people. More recently he has begun to experiment with turning the stencils themselves into beautiful, fragile looking bronze sculptures. Here Davies takes the leftover detritus of his practice and turn it into art. Some might say a stencil is a weapon used to damage private (yet public) property, but Davies turns them into wondrous objects in their own right.
These stencil sculptures suggest a closer connection to the work of Rachel Whiteread than we may have originally thought. Stencils function through their ability to leave an imprint of negative space. But like Whiteread, Davies's stencil sculptures emphasise their positive space. The viewer begins to think about the stencil's history, and what is as used to produce. Just as his paintings raise questions about the personal and public histories of their architectural subject matter.
Paul Davies and his work inhabit a place of shifting views and unanswered questions.
It's a very interesting space indeed.