Tore Gallery, Tore, by Inverness, until 29 May 2010

Triptych by Denise Davis

TORE GALLERY’S latest exhibition, aCross the Carpathians, features a striking selection of new figurative works by Highland based artist Denise Davis. Inspired by the artist’s journey to Romania in autumn 2009, this collection of oils on canvas and board explore religious iconography and the power of the human figure as a means of artistic expression.

Davis’s characteristic abstraction of the figure and strong palette is exemplified in Triptych (Oil on canvas). Loose gestural brushwork invested with the energy and immediacy of drawn marks, together with a dominant palette of rich cadmium red, umber and ochre, is accented with deep ultramarine and white, every mark delivered with equal vibrancy.

The sequence of three figures spatially divided by the physical frame are compellingly laid bare, the artist shows us the inner nature of the figure as flesh right down to the bone of the spine. Choice of colour, paint handling and effective use of the triptych as a compositional/symbolic device are strongly reminiscent of the work of Francis Bacon.

Davis’s observation of neglected and decaying houses of worship on her Romanian journey has given new impetus to her ongoing exploration of the human figure. The remnants of religious imagery hidden in hundreds of Orthodox churches and suppressed under a communist dictatorship are a visual testimony of collective suffering and survival.

The introduction of religious iconography into Davis’s work is present not just in terms of visual association but treatment of the picture surface. Many of these new works work directly onto wood panel, often with the grain visible – a hard and ungiving surface. This physicality coupled with a layered treatment of paintwork, sometimes scratched away, or distressed to allow underpainting to emerge, conveys a feeling of struggle and endurance in relation to the human subject.

Mary Magdalen, a work which interestingly utilises collaged newsprint in the formation of the cross, frames the figure in a border of gold paint emerging from the dark umber ground of the painting. The use of gold and its function in icon painting in connection with the viewer is both optical and spiritual. We feel acutely in the inclined posture of the Magdalen figure and in the reflective gold that frames her, a vision of humanity with the full weight of history and experience upon it. Davis’s layering of materials also adds to this sense of searching through rubble and layers of grime for some remnant of truth – be it spiritual or simply human.

Done Deed, an image of the crucifixion, is potent in its abstraction of human form, the angular shoulders pushed to the high right-hand corner of the composition. This uncomfortable positioning of the figure, together with the violent binding marks scratched into the paint surface defines the human form in a visual language of pure expressionism. The head is subtly defined in a halo of cerulean blue together with golden highlights of Naples yellow upon the body which allow the figure to emerge resiliently out of what is symbolically humanity’s darkest hour.

Completion (Oil on canvas) displayed rather appropriately in the converted gallery’s pulpit expands this idea. The stark combination of the cross and figure in a desolate mindscape of steely grey/blue sky and black earth is illuminated by pure articulate use of cadmium red which is spilled from the base of the cross and from the adjacent figure onto the earth below. The effect of this vibrant red is quite extraordinary, like that of the gold in an icon. The connection is immediately with our own blood.

In Figure With Skull, the human form takes on an almost mythological or allegorical status. The rich alizarin crimson which dominates the scene, populated only by a ghostly hovering skull and a female figure, her back indifferently towards us, presents an imaginatively heightened narrative of life and mortality. Figure With Red Skull (Oil on canvas), with its softer paint handling, presents an interesting image of the female form linked by red accents to both death and the creation of life.

The creation of an imaginative and psychological space through abstraction can perhaps be seen most acutely in Dog Fight, infused with raw energy and the rapid violent movement of two forms barely discernable locked together in deathly struggle. Animal instinct and impulse are depicted here effectively by purely abstract marks.

There is throughout this body of work an interesting dialogue between the secular and the sacred, with the human form as mediator. It is a brave step for a gallery strongly connected with traditions of landscape painting to exhibit such a show, and although this work might best be presented in a more enclosed space where lighting can be directed with more precision, this is a fascinating and affecting body of work which deserves to be seen more widely.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

Link

• Tore Gallery