Larry Davis

"Color matters, and after 60 years of making art, the element of color is still at the top of my priority list. A given color can either energize or subdue the color next to it, so playing with this potential is what my work tries to accomplish."

Over the six-plus decades that Larry Jon Davis has pursued his artistic career, his stylistic path has undergone a steady progression from realism to abstraction. While the landscape, figurative, and still life origins of his current work are still evident, his overriding interest now centers more on complex color and design relationships rather than on detailed narrative rendering.

Davis is quick to credit the introduction of cold wax techniques into his traditional oil work for important changes to his finished paintings. Working now increasingly on cradled panels, his paint surface has become more richly textural, with expanded reliance on scraping to expose underlying layers of color.

Larry Jon Davis completed his BA in art at the University of Iowa, and he did subsequent graduate work there before finishing his Master's Degree certification at Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida. Travel to Canada, Western Europe, and the UK, in addition to a group artist exchange to Japan helped mold his aesthetic outlook. The decades as a professor of art also honed his own artistic talents.