Jim Davies

I am not specifically a 'plein-aire' painter as we understand the term. Aside from occasionally 'sketching' out of doors 'on sight', the main body of my work comprises images that are (as Calgary writer-Mary Beth Laviolette described as)... "mental constructions". This may take the form of 'appropriating' images from other sources, 'story-telling', or fashioning work that takes into account some inferred psychological or social ideas that presently manifest themselves in our society. I generally sum up my painting as platforms for expressing the essential 'aloneness' of the human attempting to dramatize and romantize this conception. I see landscape as primal: both threatening, and comforting thru familiarity of a recognizable image, but an image that communicates a certain feeling or emotion.

I introduce faint figurative elements into constructed landscapes that are both benign and forbidding to intimate something that seems about to happen or has already taken place. I try to suggest motion, or movement thru the space that I express as a linear 'time' element - not fixed 'snapshot' frames. I dramatize my work thru use of chiaroscuro to confront and draw the viewer in, as a way to compel the viewer to ask questions about the scene. I feel that landscape as a genre needs to be more than just a literal / representational description of a specific place, but as a platform for suggesting something other or more. This 'element', I leave up to the imagination of the viewer.

Advancing Mist - 2003
acrylic on canvas, 30 in x 36 in