Noah Davis

Noah Davis was an American painter and installation artist. Talented and charismatic, with a knack for rallying people, Davis was inclusive in his art and his life. He gathered his family and friends around him and refused to commit to a single figurative style or to use photographic images in a formulaic way. Nearly every canvas here is different, and most have an interpretive and painterly openness. Your eyes and mind enter them easily and roam through the different layers of brushwork and narrative suggestion. There's an unexpected optimism to all this. The paintings also dwell in silence, slow us down and hypnotize. paintings were known for being mostly figurative works depicting Black Americans in surreal landscapes. When talking about his work, Davis has said, "if I’m making any statement, it’s to just show black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it," and describes his work as "instances where black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide." Davis died at his home in Ojai on August 29, 2015 of a rare form of soft tissue cancer.