The Silent Observer
The friction between built architecture and nature serves as a dominant theme in Australian artist Paul Davies’ works.
Devoid of any human presence, Australian artist Paul Davies paints a large modern minimalist home in most of his canvases. He adorns it with a swimming pool and surrounds it with haunting trees resting in eerie silence, lending it a magical vision.
Standing in front of the painting of a house located in a forest, with slender white tree columns guarding it under the night sky, Davies says that his paintings are inspired by his photographs of buildings and surroundings that he finds interesting during his travels. His paintings turn into a stunning collage of these photographs, as the artist cuts each photograph into a stencil to sketch the outline. Twelve of his works now dot the walls at
Art District XIII gallery, in the exhibition “Southern Exposure”.
Bearing a strong graffiti influence, the landscapes appear as if they were handpicked from a vacation album — there is a swimming pool from a mansion in Los Angeles, palm trees decorating the Palm Springs, the Bauhaus-styled Seidler House in Sydney, and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in France.
Based in Los Angeles, the 37-year-old artist from Sydney utilises mid-20th century modern architecture as the skeleton for his canvases surrounded in the lap of nature. “What I find interesting about architecture is that it is a functional space and a controlled environment. Landscape, in contrast, is not so controlled and speaks of freedom. As humans, we witness this contrast. When we are indoors, we see one space that is rational and as we step outdoor, the space bursts into freedom,” he says.
In Bridges and Palms, the house rises up to a night sky, surrounded by railings that form a bridge, as tall palm trees open up like umbrellas, with the entire canvas brimming in turquoise green and black. House Palms Pool Flip stands testimony to Davies’ many sightings in the city of Palm Springs in Southern California, home to one of the largest concentrations of mid-century modern architecture. In his work, he surrounds one of its high-end luxury homes with blackened palm trees, set against a pinkish sky, with the pool in matte blue serving as a mirror reflection.
