paper airplanes-new works on paper & canvas
SCOTT DAVIDSON
Scott Davidson is a painter and printmaker. Born in 1970, he currently lives and works in New York City as the senior preparator for a prominent Chelsea gallery.
Having been raised in the city and upon graduating from McBurney High School on the west side of Manhattan, Davidson moved around the country. First to North Carolina, to eastern Washington state, finally settling in Athens, Georgia and enrolling at the University, where he studied under Tom Hammond, Joseph Sanders, Rick Johnson and received a B.F.A. in Printmaking and Book Arts in 1995. Pursuing a more critical knowledge of contemporary art making, Davidson moved back to New York in 2001, enrolling in the graduate painting program at Parsons School of Design. The Graduate faculty there, and the City of New York provided the opportunity to study with Tom Butter, Glen Goldberg, Mira Schorr, Brian Tolle and to have studio visits with a number of artists and gallerists including Arturo Herrera, Fabian Marcaccio, Stuart Diamond, David Humphrey and Alan Stone.
In 2001, Davidson stripped his practice down to find foundation, returning to a familiar intimacy and fascination with paper by focusing on his past use of it in printmaking to create collographs and as stencils in paintings and drawings. This established itself first by the paper stencils themselves. “Carefully trimming the fat to reveal the figure from the ground,” these obsessively cut and detailed full portraits are simply mounted to paper, resulting in an austere and simultaneously resonating image. Subtle at first, they lure the viewer and upon inspection, reveal a delicate, “unique and mesmerizing” (New York Resident) rendering of the subject in paper in an effort to create something that both “whispers and is resonant” (Gleem). Building further, he continues to incorporate the stencil and combine them with what Davidson describes as “delightfully visceral and archaic” media in these studies that incorporate spray paint and paper that sardonically depict vehicles colliding. The effect of the layering of paint, paper and through dashes and cuts Davidson uses to describe the individual automobiles create a chaotic mass that at its core is completely indiscernible, toward the extremities the marks are alluring if not deceptive, with a tire, grill or windshield recognizable, and hinting of form before smashing into the mass. The crashing and exploding of marks create an image that screams chaotic but is revealed to be an obsessively detailed and purposeful conglomeration of the specific.
Davidson has exhibited his work at primarily alternative spaces and is included in several private collections including those of Carol and Landon Butler (DC), Courtney and Marc Lindsay (MD), Tamara Magel (NY) and Adam Lippes (NY).