One of the best days of working life so far was a spring day in 2010 when I went to visit the artist, Alan Davie, at his home in rural Hertfordshire.
My companion was Gillian Smith, ever-resourceful and committed curator of Falkirk’s Park Gallery. Gill was in the midst of putting together an exhibition to celebrate Davie’s 90th birthday and I was interviewing him for a magazine ahead of the exhibition opening.
Davie was born in Grangemouth, just down the road from the gallery, which is based at Callendar Park. This significant birthday offered the perfect excuse to celebrate the work of one of the great Scottish painters of the 20th century.
We found Davie standing on the doorstep of the home he had designed himself. The walls were covered in his own work – in mural and painting form – while the rooms were filled with the tribal art he collected, his musical instruments and classic pieces of post-modern furniture. With his long white beard, purple paint-spattered wooly jumper and sandals with no socks, he looked like a latter-day Shaman.
Before we left, Davie, by then a widower living alone in a house and studio surrounded by memories, played the piano for us. As the notes drifted off towards an original Arne Jacobsen yellow Egg Chair in the corner to infinity and beyond, he turned to us and said: “Where does the music go?”
It was probably a line he had used many times but it struck me as deeply profound. Davie, who died at home last year at the age of 93, was always trying to capture the pulse of humanity in his paintings.
“There is no meaning,” Davie told me when I pushed him to talk in-depth about his work. “It is not intellectual at all.”
But, as the current exhibition at the Park Gallery reveals, there is meaning. It is just that you have search deep inside the swirls, patterns and colour to find your own truth.
A Universal Vision has been curated by collector and friend, James Coxson, and Smith, presents a selection of Davie’s work from the 1940s to the year 2000.
The paintings, on loan from Gimpel Fils London and private collections, highlight how Davie was inspired by many different cultures, including the Australian Bushmen, Caribbean Indians, Ancient Egyptians, Celts and Picts.
They follow Davie’s journey from abstract expressionism into myth and magic symbolism and show how, despite shifts in his approach over the decades, influenced by the art and philosophies of ancient cultures, Davie remained true to his vision leaving his work intuitive and entirely open to interpretation.
Davie’s Universal Vision can be savoured for another three weeks.
Alan Davie: A Universal Vision is at The Park Gallery, Callendar House, Falkirk until October 31. Admission is free
www.falkirkcommunitytrust.org/venues/park-gallery/
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