Artist: Martin Davison SGFA
Artist Biography:
A working artist and jazz musician, Martin Davison paints mainly in oils but draws in charcoal, pastel, pen-and-ink and anything else interesting. He became a full member of the SGFA in 2000. He draws anything and everything, in naturalistic and/or abstract modes, but always with a determination to show the truth not the prettiness.
Born in 1931, he grew up in Worcestershire and Pembrokeshire and now lives in Mortlake, a part of Richmond upon Thames. At New College, Oxford he played clarinet in the University Jazz Band. He also studied drawing part-time at the Ruskin Schools and then painting and drawing at St Martins in London.
Work in advertising and PR gave him a thorough grounding in graphic design, layout and typography. In 1970 he was appointed head of corporate PR for the Courtaulds Group. He quit this in 1972 to set up Bokonon Productions in Mortlake, a design-and-invention studio/workshop enterprise dealing in graphic design, architectural model-making, toy design and prototype-production, and games inventing. Twenty-plus of his games inventions have been marketed internationally, the best known being Rubik’s Magic Strategy Game. During these years he continued to paint, draw, woodcarve and to model in plaster, clay and resins.
Full-time as artist and musician for the last fifteen years, he has worked in almost all media and exhibits widely. His work has frequently been selected for the Pastel Society's annual shows in London's Mall Galleries and his paintings for the Royal Society of Oil Painters. In addition to being an SGFA member he shows each year with the Chelsea Art Society and is on the organising committee of the Richmond Art Society. He has been a member of the Musicians Union for 25 years and continues to compose jazz numbers and ballads as well as playing regularly in his own and other bands.
Among his teachers and gurus, he names especially Gavin Lyall, Elisabeth Shubart, Menashe Kadishman, Tom Lupton, Patsy Shillinglaw, Dr Richard Baines, Derek Hulme, Christine Byron and Jeff Nuttall. And Wally Fawkes (Trog).
28 August 2007
www.richmondartsociety.com
