The Burning Cigar Painting

Phil Davis studied Fine Art and Sculpture at Loughborough University, completing his degree in 2004. An accomplished draughtsman, Phil initially presented scenic depictions and travel experiences in pencil and oil pastel, using intense, bold colours as a way of reflecting a childlike wonder in the new, and in a sense the extreme, sometimes uncomfortable emotional commitment involved in relating to the culturally unfamiliar. Changing to working largely with oils resulted in work of much greater vibrancy, and allowed the extreme emotional sensations in which he was interested to be committed more successfully to canvas. His work now strives to acknowledge both the positive and negative energies, the good and the bad consequences, of these emotions, and how they inform our view of the world around us. More and more he attempts to inject the same feeling into his portrait/figurative work by representing the figurative form as an emotionally charged contradiction, as a twisted and gnarled yet beautiful representation of pain and raw feeling, as well as an object of pure physicality.