Website Launch

Radient Blue 3" x3"

My website was launched yesterday. Hurrah! My dear friend Jack has been working on it for a long time, while I dawdled my way to the final launch. Jack has created a comprehensive data base that enables anyone to wander through almost 40 years of art production. The menu allows one to look at work through each year or by medium, series or concept. It is flexible and productive allowing me to create catalogs of work from the site. And folks can access my blog too. 

But enough chatter. Here it is MaggieDavisArt.com   Enjoy!

Coming into Being

Educare 2003 Private collection

Halleluia! I just finished a nomination award application. It took several days of long hours to respond to questions about my work, challenges to gaining access for my work, and what I would do with 25K!  I submitted 20 images spanning 30 years of art making and explained the significance of each turning point in my work in less that 300 words. That's why it took so long.

Here's a snapshot:

Describe the nature of your work, its content and/or meaning including how it has evolved over time and what technical, cultural or other details will aid in its understanding.

            In the early 1980’s the mark became a significant aspect of my process. As content, the mark represents an affirmation of being, an awakening to wonder and a record of consciousness.  It is a persistent concept through the various investigations in my practice.

             Following a residency with Miriam Shapiro in 1983, I began a brief investigation of identity with the figure as a subject. Vigorous charcoal marks on large sheets of paper surround an anonymous female figure grappling with an inherited hierarchy.  The drawings visualized my claim to identity as an artist.(1-3) 

            In 1990 the endangered Florida Everglades renewed my interest in landscape as content. The mark articulated the infinite and lively expanse of the Everglades while a black pool and red sky suggests finitude. (4)  

         

            In 2000 I moved from landscape to explore a space defined only by shallow fields of color interacting with a screen of marks. Emptiness, ambiguity and spatial conjecture characterized these gestational works. (5-7) 

            By 2007 I was making large-scale paintings crowded with colors that competed for attention. (8-9) The scale and congested compositions became overwhelming so I retreated to making small works. The smaller works from 2009- enabled me to define and understand the nature of the space I was seeking. (10-13)

            The new paintings trace the relational aspects of abstraction both across the surface and within a deeper space. Each painting contains a set of relationship that interact on a ground that advances or retreats in relation to the brush marks. I work to subvert expectations in a process that allows for a fluctuating reading of what I call an abstract narrative. The relational aspects function as a coming into being. (14-20)

Now the wait begins. Announcements in June.

Abstract Narrative

Remnant Series 2009 o/c 14" x 11"

I enrolled in the IGNITE course at C4 Atlanta so I am starting to think about my role as an entrepreneur   and an artist. I love the studio and have buried myself there for the past several years. Now it's time to get out and find out what it is I do, why I do it and how it connects to the larger world. So here is what I have discovered so far:

What do you do or make?

I make abstract paintings that combine the allure of color with an edginess expressed through the tension between the painted mark and its environment. The paintings explore the relationships between presence and absence, figure and ground, interruption and continuance and are suggestive of an abstract narrative.

What is the purpose of your work?

I want my work to change peoples’ state of mind. 

I want  my work to be a signature brand.           

Where do you see yourself in the future?

My work will be seen in regional and national venues.

My paintings will become a brand.

Collectors will buy my work.

My work will be included in public art spaces.

What do you stand for?

           

I believe art can be both beautiful and edgy.

I believe art can change peoples’ state of mind.

My work is beautiful, edgy and can change peoples’ state of mind.

Art can be smart!

            

What value does your art offer?

My work proposes a new approach to painting by creating abstract narratives that address contemporary issues such as fragmentation and isolation,  With a highly skilled and intentional approach to painting technology, these works offer properties that are visually alluring yet challenge the viewer’s expectations of what constitutes painting.

The Size of the Frame Doesn't Matter

Homage to Derrida 2013

This is the end of receiving prompts to blog about, not that I have been very good about being focused on each prompt. But the experience has helped me reach something I was looking for, namely a focus to my own reasons for blogging. This seems to be the right place for speculating about things, for ruminating, for turning ideas over to find something new to think about. So, its been very successful from that standpoint. I goes the next thing is to expand my arena, find folks who might think alike or unalike about art, philosophy and the written word.

I plan to continue less daily blogging practice but just enough to annoy my followers sporadically.
More importantly it is a great way to get my thinking out of my head and into space, even if the boundaries are only me.

John Ruskin's Drawing Lesson

I have been reading Alain De Botton's The Art of Travel, a delightful book that investigates the mercurial attitudes travelers bring to their experience. One of the segments is about John Ruskin, an 19th century artist and writer who was one of the earliest proponents of the benefits of drawing as an educational tool. He recommended that EVERYONE should be required to draw! I am very fond of Mr. Ruskin.

But he also developed another exercise that he required of his students when traveling. He recommended that they should practice "word-painting," a form of writing that briefly describes a scene or experience in exquisite detail. His reasoning was that when practicing "word-painting,"  one becomes totally absorbed in "seeing" the world rather then the usual browsing that happens when one travels. He argues that such "seeing" will out last the limitations of a photograph when the journey is over because it will help the student to develop an eye for the visual aspects of life.

So today I spent the day observing the details. Here is one on my "word images":

Birds were the first musicians.

Drinking coffee at the breakfast table I saw a tiny brown wren sitting on top of the bell which is perched on top of the well house about 20 feet from the window. The sun had just blazed through the magnolia tree on the east side of the garden, so there was a lovely warm filtered light washing over everything. The wren lifted its head skyward and let out a full throated warble I could hear from inside. It's cream colored breast was warmed by the sun. Its throat muscles strained to let us know he was awake.

AAAAH! My Roswell!

Losing It  2014 ink, flash on paper 12" x 12" 

I know what art can do for a city having visited and intentionally sought out the art from each city gateway, airport, highway and places on the street. I have favorites: Chicago, New York, Philadelphia airport, Orlando Airport, Miami Airport. Atlanta's public art trails behind these great cities. I came of age as an artist in Miami and can say that the public art program blossomed in the 1980's and had a powerful influence on city life. The Rockne Grebbs rainbow installation over the Miami River was something to behold while traveling through the city on the highway. My own work is in the public art collections in Miami, Orlando, and Tallahassee. 

I have contributed to Atlanta and Roswell by being active in WCAGA (board member 2014); Advisory Board for the Zuckerman Museum of Art (KSU) and recently appointed to the Steering Committee for the City of Roswell's Imagine Roswell Art: 2014. Our committee is conducting community conversations to gather information to develop a plan for arts and culture in Roswell's future. I am thrilled to be part of this forward thinking city. I am also an active member in the Roswell Historical Society, a cheerleader for historic preservation.

Cities that enable artist communities to flourish will be cities that differentiate themselves from each other. It is the unique aesthetic vision of a city that will mark that city as an attractive destination. How a city looks can only be accomplished when artists are contributors to the process. Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future, says it best. Check it out!

POST RANT

Rant 2014 ink on paper 12" x12"

Rant Too

I only rant about politics, and stupid drivers, never about art.

I have no desire to make my work pay for itself.

My ambition is to be known not rich.

I channel my energy into works on paper.