Michael Davidson- Recent Work

Michael Davidson is a painter living and working in Toronto. He graduated from the semi-infamous University of Guelph's Visual Arts program with a BFA in 1988 under the tutelage of Tony Scherman, Suzy Lake and others who made the school what it is. His Curriculum Vitae is linked here. In the last twenty years of exhibiting, his painting work has become more increasingly concerned with the trajectory of late modernism and painting as a pure medium in the sense that we discuss such things in the work of Robert Ryman or, say, Barnett Newman. They are paintings outside of the context of fashions in the world of contemporary art, which is to say - they exist only in the framework of their own internal logic. They are concerned with gesture and total economy of figuraion. In this sense they should not be considered 'abstract' in any way.  They are indeed figurative and representational – though not necessarily related to that 'representational world' that we normally think of when we hear the word.

 

	The Seven Sisters The 'Seven Sisters' is the name for one of Davidson's newest group of paintings. It is also the folk moniker denoting a cluster of seven stars in the constellation of Taurus, shown right. A prominent star groupin, especially in the northern hemisphere winters, there is no end to the mythology they inspired in many cultures - from the Aztecs to the Japanese to mentions in the Qu'raan. Further information found here The Seven Sisters' paintings are the result of the artist's meditation on the Pleiades' presence- both in the sky and their presence in our culture. Each of the paintings is named after one of the stars in the constellation, as below.

 

The Dream Explained (MAIA), Oil on Canvas", 2013, 36"x40.

'Blackbird' (Celaeno), Oil on Canvas", 2013, 30"x30"	'Of Mere Being' (Electra),Oil on Canvas, 2013, 30"x30"
'Jungian Brink' (Alcyone), Oil on Canvas, 2013, 30"x30"	'False Gods' (Merope), Oil on Canvas", 2013, 24"x24"
'Bollingen' (Taygette), Oil on Canvas", 2013, 30"x30".	'Field of Night' (Asteropoe), Oil on Canvas", 2013, 30"x30".

OTHER WORKS FROM 2012

Time Recorded I', Oil on Canvas, 2012, 30"x30".	'Time Recorded II', Oil on Canvas, 2012, 30"x30".
'Time Recorded III', Oil on Canvas, 2012, 30"x30". SOLD	'Wave and Plane'', Oil on Canvas, 2012, 30"x30".
'Time Recorded III', Oil on Canvas, 2012, 30"x30".	'U Antarctica'', Oil on Canvas, 2012, 30"x30". SOLD