Abstraction

About Abstraction

Contemporary artist Mel Davis is respected as an adventurous and masterful painter who has explored various art historical movements. The award-winning Canadian artist is known for her use of space, colour and gestural marks.
In this oil painting, abstract shapes in bright pops of colour—melon, cornflower blue, green, soft gray and white are scattered like raindrops across the raw, textured canvas. One thickly applied ‘dab’ in chartreuse draws the eye to the center of the work.

“My paintings investigate iconic themes in art such as landscape, the portrait, the interior. I am interested in how we as makers and viewers can find endless modes of description and emotional connection in these classical representations.” -Mel Davis

“Davis has remained dedicated to basic principles… throughout her career, however, often testing the boundaries of these techniques by incorporating stark, solid fields of color that mischievously interact with comparatively fluid and gestural markings.” -Lorna York, Madison Galleries, California

Mel Davis was born in Montreal and graduated from Concordia University with a BFA in 1998. A short study trip at the Slade School of Art in London was followed by a move to California where she acquired her MFA at the San Francisco Institute of Art. Her work has won numerous awards including the Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec, The Canada Council for the Arts and the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award. Davis’s work has been shown in both solo and group shows in Canada and the U.S.