Francis Davison

Introducing another of my favourite artists.

For the last thirty-two years of his life Francis Davison (1919-84) made coloured paper collages. A Cambridge graduate, he began as a poet but turned to painting in the late 1940s after Patrick Heron, a friend from school days, had invited him to St Ives.

In 1950, he married the artist Margaret Mellis and moved to Suffolk. The early paintings and collages of landscapes and cottages confess their Cornish roots but, progressively, colour took over and, while a strong sense of landscape remained, any hint of depiction was dismissed. Davison's mature collages are made of coloured papers, butting, interlocking or overlaid, added and subtracted, built and adjusted towards their eventual, accumulative shape.

Francis Davison has still to be fully acknowledged as one of the major British abstract artists and colourists of the 20th century.

Please click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHMz5_fl95k where you will find two short films which make up a superb documentary on the artist.

For more of his work please click on www.francisdavisonart.com

to view my own artwork please click here
http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/richard-witham-art