Colin Davidson

Colin Davidson is a contemporary artist, living and working near Belfast, Northern Ireland. Since graduating with a first class honors degree from the Art and Design Faculty at the University of Ulster in 1991, Colin Davidson has exhibited extensively in London, New York, Milan and across Ireland. He has been shown regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, where he has twice won awards, and has been an Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy since 2006, having won the R.U.A. Gold Medal three times and the Silver Medal twice.

Colin Davidson’s work is in public and corporate collections across Ireland, including the Arts Council for Northern Ireland, the Office of Public Works Collection Ireland, the Law Society of Ireland, the Ulster Museum, the National Gallery of Ireland and Queen’s University Belfast. A selection of portraits of writers and actors from Colin’s latest body of work is presently on display in the newly-reopened Lyric Theatre, Belfast.

Seamus Heaney standing next to his portrait (2012) (from the series Between The Words 2013) oil on linen 127 x 117 cm

Colin Davidson does not sketch a pose. He creates a moment.

“I prefer to use the word moment, because the word pose implies that the sitting has had some sort of for malstructure. There is no structure. We talk about everything and there is no real need for the sitter to sit still. The particular moment I’m looking for is when that person is lost is their own thoughts, in their own world. Although I can start to get to know the person through interaction and conversation during the sittings, it is the moments between the words that I find most compelling. I can catch a glimpse of the spirit of the person, and these are the moments I strive to paint. I work up a number of drawings and then transfer the image to the canvas at that size through gridding the drawing and canvas up.