Front Cover: A Crop of Maize near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne, w/c, 15in x 10in (38cm x 25.5cm)
Surveying the Woodshed, Little Compton
Exhibited: Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, 1975 w/c, 10.5in x 17in (27cm x 43cm). NFS
Introduction
This is the first exhibition of my own work and anyone reading this might think that the ‘two aspects’ cited in the title are, on the one side ‘John Davies the gallery’ and, on the other side ‘John Davies as artist’ which might be a surprise to some. In fact, the two aspects refer to two contrasting sides of my practice as an artist, painting the landscape and, much more recently, creating abstract compositions.
I set out to be an artist in the early 1970’s. Art had been my main interest at both preparatory school in Solihull and at Oundle School in Northamptonshire. I still have certificates from the Royal Drawing Society for Passes in 1954, ’57, ’58, and Passes with Honours for 1956 and 1959. I attended Birmingham Art School, Margaret Street, for a short spell studying Technical Illustration in 1964, my attendance unfortunately being terminated by a serious car accident as a passenger. But what I learned in that short space of time, principally ‘vanishing point’ and ‘horizon line’, became a valuable asset. Also, I spent a great deal of time viewing historic paintings at Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, and was greatly inspired by the work of the Pre-Raphaelites and the landscapes of David Cox.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s I shared a house on Packington Park with four contemporaries and was fortunate enough to have a studio there, with sufficient space to develop my watercolour technique. From that address I exhibited and sold works at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and with the New English Art Club. As a result, I was commissioned by Christina Foyle to create a book-jacket for one of her publications.
By means of an inheritance and an insurance pay-out for injuries received in my accident, I purchased a cottage with an attached barn in Little Compton, Cotswolds in 1972. I completed renovations and created a studio in 1974 and submitted my first painting from that address to the Royal Academy in the spring of 1975. It was a huge boost to my confidence when Surveying the Woodshed, Little Compton (facing page) was selected for the RA Summer Exhibition of that year, made the hanging and was sold. This was followed by my painting At the Back of Little Compton (page 5) in 1976, which was also selected by the RA, but not hung.
From the early 1970’s I had been buying and selling 19th and early 20th Century paintings to subsidise my developing art practice, with the intention of exhibiting these and developing a broader market for art sales. Consequently I opened a one-roomed gallery in the old barber’s shop in Church Street, Stow-on-the-Wold in May 1977.
This proved successful, and I expanded the gallery on four occasions over the next 25-30 years. However, somewhat sadly, the fascination of the art dealing world - the availability of wonderful paintings, the characters within the trade, the travel, the exciting process of presenting work, the delight of restoration and framing, the staging of exhibitions – all brought my own art practice to a halt.
Having sold the cottage at Little Compton in the 1980’s I did take another studio in the 1990’s to pursue painting inspired by the music I love (being classical, from Rameau to Peteris Vasks for example), but whilst I expanded my knowledge of music, I was never happy with that body of work.
A move for the gallery from Stow to Moreton in Marsh came in 2007, but it was lock-down in 2020 that kickstarted my painting again.
We had an exhibition opening planned for Saturday March 24th 2020, but lock-down was announced to begin immediately on Friday 23rd. Aware of its likelihood, I had come into the gallery on the preceding Monday to hang the show, thinking ‘well, what is the point, no one is going to come and view the exhibition’ but I found myself hanging it as per normal.
I ordered a video camera and tracking dolly on-line, set it all up to shoot the whole exhibition in situ so people could view it on their PC or laptop. Sadly, this simply didn’t work. I couldn’t prevent reflections interfering with the footage, since two of the artists’ works were glazed. So I sent all the kit back. Clients phoned about the exhibits anyway, so I took the paintings out to show in people’s homes, leaving them at a safe distance in people’s front hallways.
However, with no one coming to the gallery for the first time in a long time, I was free to go out and draw. The first location I thought of was just outside Moreton-in-Marsh, at Lemington Lakes
fishing grounds. I have been drawing and painting consistently, part time, ever since.
I have dubbed my style High Naturalism.
My practice has always been to choose my subject and then go and sit at the location to complete a working drawing. I used to make notes on the drawing itself, about colour and details, but now I use my mobile phone camera to take images for reference.
My technique (often described as pointillism by people who have viewed my work, with one observer coining the phrase ‘Seurat on speed’) is very time consuming, but it is just the manner that I am driven to pursue.
I love working in the countryside, in the fields that make up the local landscape that I know and understand, and I hope to keep taking this work further. There are so many subjects out there to tackle. I would also like to produce work inspired by Klimt’s woodland scenes which I feel are sublime.
To return to the title of this exhibition Two Aspects of an Artist, this applies to the two distinct and highly contrasting sides of my work – the High Naturalism and the Abstract.
The Abstract section of this catalogue starts on page 28.
John Davies March 2025
At the Back End of Little Compton
w/c, 15.25in x 12.25in (39cm x 31cm)
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, selected not hung 1976. NFS
From 2020 on ...
April 2020
w/c, 16in x 12in (41cm x 30cm)
April 2020
w/c, 14in x 10in (35.5cm x 25.5cm)
Pond at Lemington Lakes
Sweet Light at Lemington Lakes
April 2020
Pond Reflections, Lemington Lakes
w/c, 20in x 14in (51cm x 36cm)
Natural Pond at Lemington Lakes
April 2020
w/c, 22.5in x 30in (57cm x 76cm)
April 2020
Natural Pond at Lemington Lakes (II)
w/c, 40in x 30in (102cm x 76cm)
Field near Barton-on-the-Heath
A
w/c, 15.5in x 11in (39.5cm x 28cm)
A Field of Rape near Long Compton, Warwickshire
w/c, 14in x 20in (36cm x 51cm)
w/c, 10.5in x 14.5in (27cm x 37cm)
Apple Tree in an Old Warwickshire Orchard (I)
w/c, 14.5in x 10.5in (37cm x 27cm)
Apple Tree in an Old Warwickshire Orchard (II)
a
w/c, 16in x 12in (41cm x 30cm)
a
w/c, 16in x 12in (41cm x 30cm)
In
Warwickshire Rape Field (I)
In
Warwickshire Rape Field (II)
Tree in a Field of Rape
w/c, 20in x 14in (51cm x 36cm)
Field of Rape, South Warwickshire
A
w/c, 14in x 20in (36cm x 51cm)
A Peaceful Late Autumn Afternoon, Lemington Lakes
w/c, 40in x 50in (102cm x 127cm)
At the Top of Rosary Lane, Little Wolford
w/c, 10.5in x 14.5in (27cm x 37cm)
In Rosary Lane, Little Wolford
w/c, 11in x 12in (28cm x 30cm)
Acer Tree in Autumn, Little Wolford w/c, 14in x 20in (36cm x 51cm) NFS
August, 2023
w/c, 15in x 10in (38cm x 25.5cm)
A Crop of Maize near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne
August, 2023
w/c, 12in x 16in (30cm x 41cm)
Sheep on a Hot Day near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne
August, 2023
w/c,
Orchard with Sheep, Hot Day, near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne
16in x 12in (41cm x 30cm)
August, 2023
w/c, 12in x 16in (30cm x 41cm)
Sheep in an Orchard near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne, 39° C
August, 2023
w/c,
A Field of Sunflowers near Riberac, Dordogne
10in x 14.5in (25.5cm x 37cm)
w/c, 10in x 14in
A Late Crop of Sunflowers near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne (I)
(25.5cm x 36cm)
w/c, 10in x 14in (25.5cm x 36cm)
A Late Crop of Sunflowers near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne (II)
A Late Crop of Sunflowers near St Martial de Viveyrol, Dordogne (III)
w/c, 14in x 10in (36cm x 25.5cm)
On painting Abstract Compositions
I started painting abstract compositions a few years ago for a number of reasons. Firstly, I have loved viewing the semi-abstract or abstract works of significant mid-20th Century artists in general. Dating back many years I have been particularly attracted to the work of Sonia Delaunay and the Canadian Jean Paul Riopelle, and later, in New York, Venice and London, I experienced first-hand the work of the New York School and American artists such as Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline.
I have also handled the works of many outstanding British artists from the 1950’s and ‘60’s, including Bernard Farmer, William Gear, Adrian Heath, William Scott, and Douglas Swan to name a few. I have been inspired by all of these artists’ paintings.
Secondly, I am attracted to creating expressive compositions, as opposed to just painting what I see. Of course, there is a strong interpretive element in my representational paintings, as well as a passion for rendering nature from a technical point of view. But the starting points of my representational paintings are, obviously, first-hand observation and faithful reportage.
But I also wish to convey energy and feeling from what is not so much observed, as felt and experienced; using shapes and colour instinctively to form stimulating compositions.
I am highly inspired by music (in my case some 18th Century, but mainly 19th and 20th Century, classical music). and have often speculated about finding a way of rendering shape and colour in a manner related to, or inspired by, specific pieces of music.
Now I realise that this is almost certainly impossible to achieve. Even if successful, I doubt that any observer would react to the composition of any such painting in the manner intended by the creator, although that is not a critical matter in itself.
Another way of stating this is that any expressive imitation of music in visual form, at least in painted form, is an impossibility. But I do still hope to deploy the inspiration I receive from specific pieces of music as starting points for abstract compositions.
There is so much music that I love deeply; my late father acquired a fine Quad Hi-Fi set up in the late 1950’s; this was up-dated, twice, in the late 1960’s and again in the 1980’s.
In the days of 78-rpm records, much Beethoven piano music was heard in our home, along with Schubert and Schumann. Then came 33.3 rpm vinyl which brought, in our case, recordings of Rachmaninov piano concerti, works by Walton and, most significantly for me, Debussy, Ravel, Sibelius and Mahler.
Over the last fifty years I have enjoyed discovering some earlier music, but I am often most inspired by progressive mid to late 20th Century and 21st Century works by Britten, Shostakovich and particularly Witold Lutoslawski and the contemporary composer Peteris Vasks.
Before I leave the subject of music, I would just say how much I rely on BBC Radio 3; it is just simply a wonderful resource that I simply would not be without. Most visitors to the gallery will be aware of Radio 3 playing in the gallery and it is also my default
setting on radios in my studio, dining room, kitchen and in the car.
The level of research and scholarship within Radio 3’s music programme is unrivalled, and I feel it is an institution to be treasured, particularly with such inspired and brilliant presenters as Petroc Trelawny, Giorgia Mann, Katie Derham, Kate Molleson, Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Fiona Talkington, Ian Skelly, Michael Berkeley and Tom Service, to name just a few.
One ‘elephant in the room’ that I did manage to get out when first diverting into abstract composition, was that the start of creating an abstract work doesn’t have to begin with the observation of a specific subject in one’s line of sight.
Many semi-abstract or abstract paintings have started with a particular subject in view, such as Cubist works for example. But since the coming about of Abstract-Expressionism in the mid20th Century, a visual language in paint that is driven by instincts, feelings, colour and form, has become well established.
I find some people instantly ‘get’ abstract work, while detractors of the form tend to ask ‘But what does it represent?’. I so wish to reach out to those who do not respond to abstract work, both from an artist and dealer point of view. Ifind that there is so much richness, diversity and stimulation to be found beyond representation. But, that said, I still love so many examples of representational work as well.
John Davies March 2025
Abstract Composition 040522
Con Brio
Gouache on panel 12in x 12in (30.5cm x 30.5cm)
Abstract Composition 141124 Break Through
Gouache over watercolour
20in x 15in (51cm x 28cm)
Abstract Composition 020225/2
Vitality (II)
Gouache over watercolour
20in x 15in (51cm x 28cm)
Abstract Composition 020225/1
Vitality (I)
Gouache over watercolour
20in x 15in (51cm x 28cm)
Abstract Composition 051124
Gouache over watercolour
9in x 7.5in (23cm x 19cm)
Abstract Composition 061124
Gouache over watercolour
9in x 7.5in (23cm x 19cm)
Abstract Composition 071124
Gouache over watercolour
15in x 11in (38cm x 28cm)
Abstract Composition 121124
Gouache over watercolour
9in x 7.5in (23cm x 19cm)
Abstract Composition 111124
Gouache over watercolour
9in x 7.5in (23cm x 19cm)
Abstract Composition 101124
Gouache over watercolour
9in x 7.5in (23cm x 19cm)
Abstract Composition 131124
Gouache over watercolour
9in x 7.5in (23cm x 19cm)
Two Aspects of an Artist | Price List
of paintings by John Davies
Pg. 6 Sweet Light at Lemington Lakes £2,600 Pond at Lemington Lakes £2,200
Pg. 7 Pond Reflections £3,650
Pg. 8 Natural Pond at Lemington Lakes (I) £5,750
Pg. 9 Natural Pond at Lemington Lakes (II) £6,750
Pg. 10 A Field near Barton-on-the-Heath £2,600
Pg. 11 A Field of Rape near Long Compton
Pg. 12 Apple Tree in an Old Warwickshire Orchard (II)
Apple Tree in an Old Warwickshire Orchard (I)
Pg. 13 In a Warwickshire Rape Field (I) £2,600 In a Warwickshire Rape Field (II) £2,600 Pg. 14 Tree in a Field of Rape
Pg. 15 A Field of Rape, South Warwickshire £3,750
Pg. 16/17 A Peaceful Late Autumn Afternoon
Pg. 20 A Crop of Maize
Pg. 19 Acer Tree in Autumn, Little Wolford
25 A Late Crop of Sunflowers (I)
26 A Late Crop of Sunflowers (II)
Pg. 27 A Late Crop of Sunflowers (III)
Pg. 29 Abstract Composition 040522 Con Brio £1,200
Pg. 30 Abstract Composition 141124 Break Through £2,200
Paintings may be purchased on receipt of the catalogue Any of these exhibits may be purchased through the OwnArt Scheme (Interest free over ten months, UK purchases only) All prices are inclusive of hand-made frames and top quality non-reflective glass. Tel: 01608 652255 ∙ E-Mail: gallery@johndaviesgallery.com ∙ www.johndaviesgallery.com
