Visual Arts News

Vol. 26, No.2, Summer 2004

Joanne Jefferson

Ben Howell Davis

Peer Gallery, May 4-13

Excerpt from Review:

I had what I would describe as an oral response to Davis’s paintings – my salivary glands woke up while I was looking. Maybe it was too close to lunch, but Davis’s technique of spreading the paint with a palette knife reminded me of something edible, like butter, or cream cheese.

Davis’s work is, on the whole, meditative, steady, uncomplicated. I did find two of his pieces somewhat unsettling. One of his “Horizon in Time” paintings depicts a bubble-gum pink sky over black land that evoked a sense of anxiety, like an impending storm. “Inertia” and “Inertia (close-up)” contain the only obvious movement in the exhibit. The series consists of two views of what looks like a dust storm swirling across a barren, brown landscape. Again, a sense of impending disaster contrasts with the lucid calm of the other paintings.

While the horizon paintings are at least partially representational, Davis’s “Red Garden”, “Green Garden”, and “Blue Garden” are more abstract, pulsing with vertical texture – a welcome contrast – and layers of color. The composition is a comforting blend of chaos and deliberate arrangement, appropriate to the subject, neither startling nor unsettling.