Young at Art
The Australian Magazine March 2007
Kerrie Davies
excerpt ...... Ruddy's Archibald success is proof that winning prizes can kick start careers. The same an be said for Barton, with wins in the Sulman Prize and the Blake Prize for Religious Art, and for Lovett, whose $5,000 prize in the Qantas Spirit of Youth Award for his painting Inner Metro Parking Dragon, funded a trip to Spain. But as painter Paul Davies has discovered, one can also be a star artist without prizes. Davies, 27, has 100 people on a waiting list for his urbanscapes and his next exhibition opening on March 20 at Sydney's Tim Olsen Gallery, should be a sell-out.
"I have 20 pages of letters saying 'We really like your entry but unfortunately .....' so I have a bad track record,", Davies says with good humour. "But while I haven't done well with prizes, they can help a lot of people. They get you a foot in the door, and something like the Brett Whiteley scholorship will be published in the papers, so you reach a wider audience." ignoring rejection, Davies did the hard yards, mounting his own exhibitions and doggedly trawling galleries with his portfolio, an experience that Barton found too humiliating to continue after just one morning.
Davies is one of the new breed of Australian artists who has one eye lovingly fixed on the canvas and the other looking beyond - to the reality of the marketplace. Lovett, Ruddy and sculptor John Nicholson, 36, who is gaining recognition for his sublime, colourful works constructed in Perspex and who is featured in the Australian Art Collector's 50 Most Collectable Artists edition , all have personal websites as well as their gallery marketing. Davies - whose youthful attractiveness, paint splattered jeans and eager personality is surely a gallery publicist's dream - says finding gallery representation 'is akin to a band being up by a record company".
"After having my first show at Olsen I knew I could make a living as an artist," he says. The gallery is established, and a brand name, and that brand will be extended to you."