About
I am an artist and teacher based in San Francisco, CA.
Biography
Christopher Davison is an American artist who spent a combined two decades living in Philadelphia and New York. He now resides in San Francisco. He has shown his work at various locations in the United States and Europe including Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in NYC, Mark Moore Gallery in LA, and the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts. He spent over a decade teaching drawing, painting, printmaking, and design to college and high school students in Philadelphia.
Artist Statement
The visual language of Christopher’s work is influenced by early 20th Century Art & Illustration, Medieval European Art, Indian and Persian Miniatures, and in general, the Decorative Arts of the Ancient World including Greek Vase Painting, Etruscan Tomb Painting, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. The imagery found in Davison’s art is derived from an intuitive, process-based approach, where specific signs and symbols slowly emerge out of an initial burst of chaotic mark-making. It is only through making the work that it becomes known. Trusting the mystery of the creative act itself overlaps with his interest in mysticism and mystical states of consciousness. In this way, the act of making art shares much with the path of traditional Yoga in the East. It is through the pure act of creation that we “yoke” ourselves to a higher consciousness and experience something beyond ourselves. The writings of Ananda Coomaraswamy, Hazrat Inayat Khan, Jane Ellen Harrison, Joseph Campbell, Terrance McKenna, William James, Eckhart Tolle, Wassily Kandinsky and others, have played a role in shaping his perspective on the fundamentally spiritual nature of the creative process.