January 04, 2014 in Recently Added, Painting
BIOGRAPHY:
Artist Martin Davis is an ex-firefighter turned painter working as a freelance artist since his retirement from the Service six years ago. Already well known locally Martin’s wider reputation is beginning to attract critical acclaim with submissions to professional competitions regularly being shortlisted.
Martin Richard Davis was born December 18, 1954 and raised in the small market town of Shirebrook in the Bolsover district of north-east Derbyshire on the border with Nottinghamshire, England in the 1950’s and 60’s. Martin developed a love for painting and drawing at an early age. Creating images has always been a form of escapism for Martin and his art has become a sort of private passion he has carried with him ever since he was a young man.
After concluding his studies in higher education at a university in Birmingham and a brief spell in finance Martin joined the Fire & Rescue service... a career in which he served dutifully for thirty years. He only turned fully to painting after 2008 when he left the fire service and found adequate time to devote to his art.
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MARTIN DAVIS
About his art, Martin says, “There is a feeling of immediacy, of life, of connectedness, with painting that I don't get from anything else, so I feel I have to paint. It’s kind of hard-wired into me. I would describe myself as a modern traditionalist painter. I like to paint anything from portraits to landscape, figures to abstracts; but it’s a moving feast. I don’t stand still. At the moment my work is mainly figurative & I am exploring the overlap between abstract and realism and the ways this manifests itself in the boundary areas that define and exist between shape & form. There is so much in this that affects the way you see the world.
My compulsion to produce art is an emotional response to colour and form, but I’m also influenced by light and atmosphere in the things around me. How inspiration occurs and what triggers it is the key to the variety in my work. Specific subject matter is much less important for me than its emotional content at a purely aesthetic level. I’m not drawn especially to specific things such as boats or figures, or buildings, or any whole thing. Rather I find I can be attracted to bits of anything - the shape of a hat, the way a shadow lies across an object tantalisingly concealing it, a glint of light or an unexpected but delightful bit of colour. In my experience such things are very rarely comprised in the whole of something.
There is an inner beauty, a sort of “heroic” quality, inside everything if you look hard enough – it doesn’t have to be something intrinsically pretty, or attractive or especially worthy of attention. Quite often it is better if it isn’t.”
Martin believes that art at its best can be a simple, joyful experience as well as a vehicle for asking fundamental questions about what it is to be human.
Today Martin Davis continues his work from his studio at home in Swanwick, Derbyshire
Martin’s work is currently on display in Derbyshire at Whitepeaks Fine Art Gallery in Dunston, Chesterfield, Cromford Studio & Art Gallery, Cromford and at Leabrooks Gallery, Leabrooks.
You can view Martin’s splendid paintings in the gallery below. To buy Martin’s art you may contact him directly through the contact form provided.