Davie's career stretches back more than sixty years, to some remarkably accomplished paintings and drawings made when he was a teenager in Edinburgh in the 1930s. His activities as a printmaker have been intermittent but concentrated. He made a series of monotypes and a couple of linocuts in the late 1940s and early 1950s; a number of colour lithographs in the mid1960s and 1970s; and then relatively little apart from a portfolio of prints made in the late 1980s. Until 1999 nearly all his printmaking had been confined to the medium of lithography. Then, at the age of eighty, he embarked upon a major campaign of screenprinting, working with the master printmaker Kip Gresham at Gresham Studio, near Cambridge from which these pieces come.
“The edition numbers of these prints are small because the subtlety of Davie's drawing pushes the medium to its limits requiring stencils that are very fragile. For collectors of Davie 's work, this body of prints offers many wonderful pieces from which to choose.”
The new prints are very strong, Davie in the classic mode. They have all the mystery, poetry, wide ranging references and certainty of touch which have become hallmarks of this remarkable artist.
Screenprinting is a process which suits Davie well. The clarity and density of the colour, together with the wide range of tonal information, allow his drawing free rein while offering real opportunities for experimentation.
The nature of the collaboration is very close to Davie 's experience in playing jazz and free form music; all those involved are dependent on one another and experimentation is at the heart of the activity. This type of interaction had first been explored by Davie whilst working with the Matthieu studio on the Zurich Improvisations in the 1960's, a body of lithographs which had an enormous international impact. His considerable reputation as a printmaker has its roots in these amazingly inventive lithographs. Now that Davie has embraced screenprinting another journey has begun.
Davie is often clubbed together with the Abstract Expressionists, but this slightly misses the point. He is a Surrealist at heart. Like the Surrealists he is drawn towards chance, the irrational and the unconscious. If the meaning of his work is elusive, that is precisely the intention. The world is a mysterious, magical place and it is in keeping that Davie's pictures offer mysterious new worlds for the viewer to enter and travel within.

mpefm NEW ACQUISITIONS art press release