Richard Thomas Davis

Artist

Richard Thomas Davis

Birth

1947

Birthplace

Middletown,  New York

Death

 

Place of Death

 

Gender

Male

Nationality

Canada/United States

Movement

Contemporary Realism

Media

Painter

Richard Thomas Davis is part of an emerging generation of artists to come of age in the late 1980s. A generation who, in the wake of modernism, conscientiously reinvested in the tradition of realism as a means of expressing feelings, intuitions and perceptions about their world.

Davis has been painting still-life compositions with buoys since he moved to the maritime of Nova Scotia in 1982. Buoys have held a persistent fascination for him, symbolizing a diversity of possible associations, ranging from a nostalgia for more stable times to the tribulations of abandonment.  Still Life with Five Buoys is one of an ongoing series of formal studies where the commonplace, utilitarian buoy is transformed, and its status elevated to a treasured object. No longer merely functional or discarded curios collected along beaches, his buoys are instilled with affection, mood and humanity through a precise and arduous rendering of details and structured balance of forms.

 

After his one-man show in 1990 at Wunderlich, Davis decided to do a landscape print which resulted in an exhilarating Landmarks. What started out as a six-month project turned into one consuming three years of intensive labor, resulting in five silkscreen prints. In Landmarks Davis created a characteristic tension between a plethora of fine minutia that feeds the eye and a sense of volume that is desolate, isolated and empty.