Alan Davie: Abstracts

Providing an opportunity to consider the breadth of the career of Alan Davie (1920-2014), the exhibition presented a retrospective view of the artist’s work over six decades from 1945 to 2005. The twenty-two works reflected Davie’s early interest in jazz music, and the spontaneous and automatic practice of painting that he developed throughout his career. Davie acquired a vast and rich visual vocabulary of signs, symbols and motifs derived from a range of sources including Caribbean culture - which he experienced in his time living in St Lucia - as well as his large personal collection of African, North-American Indian and Oceanic art and artefacts. His creative influences are cited as being just as eclectic, ranging from well known European artists such as Paul Klee, to the work of his contemporaries, like the Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock.