Julyan Davis
Artist Statement
Throughout my career I have returned to certain themes. One of these is narrative painting based on folksong and folklore. In art school in London it was sea shanties, here in Western North Carolina it is Appalachian music. Such music strikes a deep chord in me. The narrative thread of this music had an effect: the tone is as often as full of irony as it is romance. Tales of love and loss, of human folly, are told in a manner often startlingly objective and laconic. The realism this fostered in me leaked into my reading of even the most outwardly romantic ballad. I remember, aged about eight, taking a very feminist slant on 'Barbara Allen', one of the very oldest folk songs. I thought, hold on, she's the town beauty; some guy falls for her and dies of grief? More likely pneumonia, snooping around her place in the rain. Why is she so quickly blamed? Who would want her out of the way?
Bio
Julyan Davis is an English-born artist who has lived in the South for twenty years. He received his art training at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. In 1988, having completed his B.A. in painting and printmaking, he traveled to the South on a painting trip that was also fueled by an interest in the history of Demopolis, Alabama and its settling by Bonapartist exiles. Julyan's home is now in Asheville's Montford district. His work is exhibited from New York to Europe and is in many public and private collections. Recent acquisitions include the Gibbes Museum in Charleston and the North Carolina Governor's Mansion and Western Residence.
Selected Exhibitions
2009 Julyan Davis: New Work, Greenhut Galleries, Portland, Maine
2008 Julyan Davis: American Paintings, Mauger Modern Art, Bath, UK
2007 Julyan Davis: Paintings of the South, Carolina Galleries, Charleston, South Carolina
2004 Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
2002 Art Afficionado, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama