Silvia Davis

“My sculptures of animals involve a process of constant adding and subtracting blocks of wood until a complex, surprising surface is established,” says Silvia Davis. “While building these blocks of color and pattern, I also work out the proportion and expression of the character. This process of building up and breaking down gives life to the character of the animals and creates an element of transformation.”

It’s easy to see that the work of Silvia Davis is complex in many ways. Each sculpture has a kind of geological memory of its making which is visible in the final form. The almost genetic shuffling and reshuffling of the many different shapes, colors, and textures of the carved blocks of wood is all there for us to see. When looking at one of her cats, a thought comes to mind may be similar to what Darwin may have thought when looking at a real cat: “How did this miracle come to be”? On a deeper level her work is a metaphor for those moments of awe, which we all feel from time to time in the face of nature.