Brenda
Davies - Feast from Famine
By Sally Hansen
Brenda
Davies attributes her career as an artist partly to her
upbringing in (very) Northern Ontario. "My parents
are fantastic, down-to-earth, wonderful people, but I was
raised in what I later realised was a centre of cultural
deprivation. I had never been to a gallery and my high school
did not even offer visual art." The artistic feast
that greeted her when she arrived in Kingston to attend
Queen's University awakened a hunger for art that blossomed
into an enduring passion for creating it.
Getting the Third Degree
Brenda compensated for her artistic deprivation during childhood
by acquiring three degrees (Bachelors of Science, Education
and Fine Art) during an eight-year stint at Queen's. To
finance her long drink from the fountain of learning, she
worked for campus security, for Parks Canada, on a construction
survey crew, as a cook, and as a snow goose biologist (field
assistant) near Churchill, Manitoba. That is where she met
her husband, Jim Davies, at the Queen's University Tundra
Biology Centre.
Her early developmental environment may have been short
on art, but it was long on wilderness activities and the
development of skills and passions that suffuse her paintings
as well as her life.
Brenda Davies' body of work reveals how much her creative
process has been influenced by her early experiences in
Northern Ontario. Northern lakes and skies and uprooted
trees figure prominently in her paintings, and they are
rendered with a clarity and purity of form that suggest
her pure enjoyment of nature and the outdoors.
"My science training really helped to develop my powers
of observation. Maybe you care more when you know more about
how things work and interact," she conjectures. She
quite consciously analyses and distils her compositions
to transform them beyond representational art. In her artist's
statement she writes, "In the transformation, the spaces
around objects and the objects themselves become equally
important. Emphasis, exaggeration and imagination work to
make all shapes within the flattened picture plane significant
in form - hopefully creating balance and rhythm between
positive and negative space."
At the same time, she strives for the freedom of gesture
and spontaneous beauty of line that she admires in works
by Matisse and other great masters she first encountered
in her Fine Arts program at Queen's. Another conscious goal
is to convey the sensual nature of paint in colour and texture.
In my eye she succeeds.
Davies' paintings illustrate beautifully how to apply deep
knowledge and understanding of your subject, your media
and your technique without sacrificing spontaneity or excitement.
Her canvases glow with the happiness and balance she has
achieved in her life, but they are much richer for her deep
understanding of the underlying complexity of her subjects
and the possibilities of her materials.
An excellent case in point is her oil painting on a wood
panel entitled Farmview - Sunflower. Davies has captured
the sinewy muscularity of the stalk and emphasized it by
carving into the wood itself. One of her influences at Queen's
was Alex Wise, who advised her to think of the canvas as
a body - muscle and blood. Another was Harold Klunder who
warned against "being too precious" about any
part of your work. Davies doesn't hesitate to rework her
canvases, intentionally revealing her creative process.
"I think it makes the work more interesting,"
she explains.
She also applies her solid scientific background to her
careful selection of materials to ensure her works are of
archival quality. "I always buy the best paint, canvas,
gesso; I never compromise." She points me to her primary
resource, maintained from her Fine Arts program at Queen's.
It is Ralph Mayer's "The Artist's Handbook of Materials
and Techniques." It recommends solutions to esoteric
problems like "blooming varnish", and sports an
impressive array of entries in the index under "adhesives."
A Balancing Act
Brenda's balancing act extends well beyond her work as an
artist. She is the mother of three young boys, an "occasional"
teacher (formerly known as a substitute teacher), an arts
advocate, a serious runner, an avid environmentalist trained
in ecology and in natural history, an ardent paddler and
traveller, and described by a fellow artist as "a really
wonderful person, not just a wonderful artist."
In 1997 the Davies bought a wonderful piece of property
on Mohr's Road in Kinburn. Then they persuaded the owner
of an 1857 stone house in Carp to sell his vacant structure
to them. It took over a year to dismantle and relocate the
basic building blocks. Their property fronts on the Mississippi
River, much to the delight of their son Matt who often gets
up at 4:30AM to go fishing. His brothers, Jacob and Stuart,
aren't as keen on fishing but they have an awesome fort
underway. In the ensuing six years Brenda has proven once
again that her work is "not about representation, but
about transformation." When I complemented her on the
outstanding results, she replied modestly, "A lot of
our house is still in its underwear because it's not trimmed
yet."
Transformation Information
Stop No. 5 at Brenda Davies' stunning but scantily-clad
home studio at 4547 Mohr's Rd. is a must-see destination
during the Red Trillium Fall Studio Tour coming up on Sat.
and Sun., Nov. 20th and 21st from 10AM-5AM. In addition
to Brenda's rich, compelling paintings, Liz Traynor's stained
glass and Jane Christie's jewellery will more than compensate
for any perceived trimming deficit. Visit http://redtrilliumst.com/
for a complete listing of participating West Carleton artists
and artisans.
For an immediate antidote to the serious artistic deprivation
you are suffering if you haven't feasted your eyes on Brenda
Davies' art, click here for
some samples.
