James T Davis Painting

I work with a variety of media - oils and acrylics, spray paint, stencils, collage, found objects, tree bark, clothing, street detritus, photographs, digital media, and written words. A graduate of Occidental College, my art studies began with Squeak Carnwath at the University of California, Davis. My early efforts were landscapes largely influenced by Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn, and then by studying with the noted American painters Wolf Kahn (in the Hans Hoffman tradition of "push-pull"), Bernard Chaet, and the teachings of Charles Hawthorne as studied at the Cape Cod School of Art in Provinctown, MA. I also gained a bit of the "art mentality/life as an artist" while studying with the British painter John Walker. He was just cool to talk to. My work is all about an exploration of gender stereotyping within the culture, and specifically how this affects men. I myself played collegiate football, and yet also found art while in college. This was a very weird mixing of two quite different worlds. I am hoping to explore how men tend to be very narrowly and stereo typically defined, and how this affects not just one man, but the whole culture. I have exhibited on the East Coast, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, CA, Santa Barbara, CA, as well as at Stanford University and other locations in Northern California. I paint, live, and surf in Los Angeles, CA.