FINE ART
The Work
About
Durhl Davis paints the way the Dutch did — because four hundred years later, nobody has found a better way to paint a piece of silver.
His still lifes work from the pronkstilleven tradition of Willem Claesz Heda, Willem Kalf, Pieter Claesz, and Adriaen Coorte: the same object language of roemers, kraak porcelain, peeled citrus, and polished metal, built through the same slow, layered process those painters used to make three-hundred-year-old paint still look wet. A ground. A thin umber tone. A loose dead-color block-in. Weeks of working up — opaque paint and transparent glaze together, session after session — until the form is there and the light has somewhere to go. Every color checked against the Munsell system before it goes on the panel.
He came to it self-taught, after twenty years as a licensed optician and alongside an ongoing career as a U.S. Coast Guard–licensed merchant marine officer — much of the work composed in the quiet of month-long voyages at sea, between watches. Neither trade was wasted: one trained his eye for how light actually behaves, the other gave him the discipline to finish what he starts, one thin layer at a time.
Painted in the old way. For those who know why that matters.
Elected Member — American Artists Professional League Member — Oil Painters of America --- National Oil & Acrylic Painters Society
