Tom Davis is a contemporary artist who studied at DMU and is now working in Walsall Birmingham. He is a visual artist working in digital and traditional painting who is inspired by personal life, video games, digital culture and perception. When he spoke about his work he gave us a very detailed and reflective presentation of his work to date, his honesty about successes and failures of his process was inspiring and reassuring.
One point he spoke about that was realising the limitations of your process, this was something that actually became a focus of my methodology this term and for me the limits of what I can do directly govern what I do. I try to work with a limit but also right up against it, in the hope that this sparks new ideas or effects. This is similar to the way Tom used his experience during lockdown to integrate his interest in games and nature.
He also spoke about media and relevance to the context, for example a digital display of work is relevant to the context of Tom and therefore an oil painting would have a different and perhaps unwanted effect.
Tom likes to make work across different media (plaster, oil, acrylic, digital & comics) he also spoke about how he enjoys converting from analog to digital and making smaller versions of work that can then be scaled up. This is similar to my own digital drawing process where I work over real life locations I find on walks/trips. Tom also makes small collages as preliminary ideas instead of drawing/painting all the time, this is something I would like to experiment with further also.
He ends by speaking about his return to naturalistic subjects, how he struggled with digital/gaming focused process and couldn’t justify it to himself completely. He also talked about how he absorbs what’s around him and about enjoying slightly different ways of working, emulating this could help me balance my confused style and help me hone in on my unique process/processes.
Another insight I got from this talk (and my own process) was the need to go out to primary sources to learn more about a subject or idea. Davis says he felt like secondary research limited his outcome and I agree, with my own work if I am limited in the amount of outer world things I can absorb that affects the diversity of my inner world.
My other favourite thing about this talk was Tom’s challenge to us: ‘My challenge to you is to go out of your comfort zone, make work outside, leave with a view to coming back with a piece of art. How can you integrate outdoor adventures into studio work or practice?’
This inspired me, much like the Ed challenge, to just get out there and go for it which in the current circumstances of the Covid pandemic has been a lot more helpful than some other guidance.
RANDOM OTHER NOTES: heavy application of acrylic to get a different effect, different language for oils and acrylics. new interest in natural subjects, watercolours and painting from life. changing aspects of your practice gives you different results, different medium different location etc. TD now paints outdoors by candlelight, very traditional and interesting process. TD now interested in NFT, but concerned by ethics and energy cost. eventually things blend, try combinations and push limitations.
https://dmureplay.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=191c2357-f91d-406c-ad1f-acf000e0f5c8
Tom also mentioned some advice for after graduation: be a part of an artist community afterwards and get in with a community and a network. Go to private views and openings to build a network and encounter as many new/interesting people as you can. Try not to be too introverted.