john davies

about

John Huw Davies (b.1987) is a contemporary British painter, composer and musician living and working in London.

Davies completed a masters degree in instrumental composition at the University of Manchester, before embarking on a career as a music producer, musical director and mixer in London, working on a variety of projects spanning pop, dance, electronic music and film scores.

In 2017 he began lecturing in music composition and production. It sparked an interest in exploring visual content to better understand the processes involved in creating abstract musical composition. Inspired by Gerhard Richter’s Cage paintings, which interpolate the controlled use of chance procedures in musical composition, Davies began exploring abstract oil painting as a means of interrogating the relationship between music and process painting.

Davies’ practice is ritualistic, physical and process-led with the work encompassing an array of sources, mediums and applications. Heavily influenced by jazz and improvised music, his approach is reactive and often involves circling a painting, forging connections between chance accidents and intentions. The initial stages of his process involves laying down colours and marks in a fashion which is designed to create a sense of dissonance, manufacturing critical incidents that forces within the painting subsequently seek to resolve.

He says of his work “At its core, my painting concerns itself with finding, creating and seeking harmony: exploring relationships and connections between isolated marks, shapes and motifs in order to create a balanced ecosystem in which dissonance and consonance can coexist. It’s about chasing a sense of resolution whilst simultaneously relinquishing the need to actually resolve. Painting is my way of exploring everything I know about the nature of music in a visual way that’s both simultaneously tangible and also inexplicable.”

 

2005 - 2009
BA and MA, Music and Composition, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

 

selected exhibitions

jul 2023
The Summer Exhibition, Drifter Galleries, London, UK

jul 2022
The Summer Exhibition, Drifter Galleries, London, UK

apr 2022
This Little Drifter Went to Market, Drifter Galleries, London, UK