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| Bob Davison, Borders, Big Yellow, 2014 |
The following text was written for the catalogue.
About Looking
Borders: outlines and edges, but, also, national boundaries,
flower beds and frames. Borders define areas but also propose the ambiguity of
a place of transition: where precisely are you as you cross the border from one
state to another? Where precisely does the town end and the country begin?
The notion of a borderland is apt for Bob Davison’s art
which occupies the liminal state between figuration and abstraction, mirroring
perceptual processes which integrate objective observation with the
subjectivity and ambiguity of memories and feelings.
The mystery and magic of seeing is that, unlike a camera’s
mechanical recording of data, our vision is constantly informed and coloured by
experience both consciously and unconsciously: what lies beyond the border of
consciousness shapes what lies within; what lies outside our immediate frame of
vison informs what we see inside.
Davison’s subtle and beautiful meditations on nature and
memory, on colour and form, are rich counterpoints to the mechanistic images
which dominate our contemporary culture and ways of seeing. Pictures are
everywhere. In 1964 Susan Sontag wrote Ours is a
culture based on excess, on overproduction [1]; half a
century on, our visual culture is super-saturated with images. The camera has a
lot to answer for. |
| Bob Davison, Dappled, Big Red, 2015 |
The gifts of photography to knowledge – and to art – have been
prodigious. But photography has spoiled us, too. We have been spoiled, not just
by the superfluity of images - Is there any thing, any place, that has not yet
been photographed, that we cannot ‘see’ and know through this extraordinary
medium? - but it has also spoiled us in the very act of perception.
Lee Friedlander, wanting a snapshot of his uncle with his new car noted
that, I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry
and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous
begonias on the porch and seventy-eight trees and a million pebbles in the
driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.[2]
Generous to a fault. The camera’s gaze reveals everything in
fascinating, but superficial, detail. Human perception might seem a poor
thing next to the revelatory detail furnished in a high definition, colour
saturated, digital image, showing us all the visual information we would
otherwise have overlooked – and, perhaps, it has made us lazy; in Sontag’s
view, the result is a steady loss of sharpness in
our sensory experience [3]. We see
only the surface appearance; we need to look harder.
Which is where drawing and painting comes in. Bob Davison’s pictures
offer rich pleasures and demand prolonged looking: they embody the recognition
that the fullest experience of the world is dependent not on mere knowledge and
information (both in overwhelmingly plentiful supply in our digital world) but
on looking, thinking, acting and feeling. (John Constable declared painting is… feeling [4]).
Visual perception is more than data collection: it is informed by
movement and emotion, memories and imagination. The human eye is never
still; it is constantly scanning and calculating, discriminating and selecting.
We experience the world by moving through it. We see what is interesting and
important to us – what is meaningful. These sights and the accompanying sensations
and emotions are stored away as memories – imperfectly, perhaps – to inform subsequent
perceptions. |
| Bob Davison, Petiolaris, 2013 |
Remembering a selection of Davison’s paintings and drawings
seen during a recent visit to his studio, I remember, in particular, a
scattering of bright yellow flowers (Welsh poppies, perhaps?) a swathe of
curious, white oblong forms rhythmically dispersed across the canvas (sometimes
suggestive of blossom, sometimes of patterns of light), the elegant silhouettes
of complex plant forms.
When I return to look again I find that (of course) my
recollections are inadequate. The richness, complexity and subtle layering of
Davison’s work mean that – unlike ‘reading’ a photograph which can deliver a
great deal of information very quickly (and need not detain the viewer for very
long) – the paintings demand, and repay, prolonged scrutiny and even then do
not exhaust their visual pleasures, for each further viewing will reveal fresh
colours, forms and textures. |
| Bob Davison, Umbellifers, 2014 |
The achievement of these paintings is hard won: Davison’s
study of nature and art has been intense, resulting in his mastery both of
drawing from nature and of the language of painting. The story of modern
painting has broadly been a dance (sometimes a battle) between figuration and
abstraction – for a while total abstraction was the dominant mode (and
Davison’s early work shows his mastery of a minimalist style) but, today, a
fruitful dialogue (cross-border discussion) is possible, and Davison’s work is
exemplary in this respect. As flowers
dance in a breeze, so shapes and forms in the paintings dance between figure
and abstraction: forms dissolve and reform in the ambiguous, translucent space
of shadows and reflections. It is a mark of great painting that form and
content are, as here, inseparable from each other.
To return, finally, to Susan Sontag’s reflections on modern
visual culture: her prescription to counter what she sees as the dulling effect
of our over exposure to images is simple: What is
important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear
more, to feel more [5].
The gift of Bob Davison’s luminous paintings is precisely to reward
the act of looking with an apprehension of the beauty and mystery of the world
before us: to cross the border between appearance and sensation, between
looking and feeling.
Richard Salkeld, 2016.
[1] Susan Sontag (2009) Against Interpretation and Other Essays, London: Penguin, p13
[2] Galassi, Peter (2005) Friedlander, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, p14
[3] Susan Sontag, ibid., p13
[4] Stephen F. Eisenman (2011) Nineteenth Century Art, London: Thanes & Hudson, p232
[5] Susan Sontag, ibid., p14
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