TM Davy (born 1980) is a New York-based painter. Davy paints and draws in the style of social realism and portraiture, recognizable for his keen sense of light and color depicting both the human and non-human.
Early life and education
Davy was born and raised in
New York, New York
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Uni ...
. Davy spent his early years fine tuning his technique at a summertime apprenticeship at the mural studio his father owned alongside highly trained Russian and Chinese
social realist
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...
academic style painters. Davy notes that he helped paint the clouds visible on the ceiling of the
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
before he began college.
Davy attended and graduated from the
School of Visual Arts where he now teaches.
Work
Davy paints a range of subject matter including portraits of friends and beachgoers, candlelight scenes, horses and ponies, and wildlife, typically highlighting the subject matter's interaction with light and shadows. "Light is the great connector in my art, and it has both symbolic and metaphysical values. "Sol Invictus." Indeed, it is the apriori pattern of our visual and symbolic systems. It is also the source of life, becoming in the leaves of grass," the artist says in an interview with CF Hill.
Davy's 2014 solo exhibition, "Candela," at the gallery 11R featured a series of intimately-scaled paintings of life-size candle flames.
In 2017, Davy debuted several small-scale and large-scale realistic paintings of horses at the downtown Manhattan gallery, 11R. The exhibition, titled "Horses," was inspired by an old photograph the artist found which read “195 Chrystie Street, 1880” that belonged to his great-great-great-grandfather. From the photograph, Davy learned that the gallery was located at the same space where his great-great-great grandfather's livery stable once stood. The sentimental and erotically charged paintings took more than two years to complete and have stylistically been compared to the Dutch old masters.
"This Marram," an exhibition of over 100 unframed studies in pastel and gouache, was presented at Van Doren Waxter gallery in late 2019. The exhibition showcased intimate scenes from the artist’s own life on
Fire Island
Fire Island is the large center island of the outer barrier islands parallel to the South Shore of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York.
Occasionally, the name is used to refer collectively to not only the central island, but also Long ...
and included sketches of friends, fellow artists and writers, and drawings of his husband, Liam, alongside flora and fauna of the island. Davy's subjects for the show included the playwright
Jeremy O. Harris
Jeremy O. Harris (born ) is an American playwright, actor, and philanthropist, known for his plays ''"Daddy"'' and ''Slave Play''. The latter received 12 nominations at the 74th Tony Awards, breaking the record previously set by the 2018 revival ...
, artist
K8 Hardy
K8 Hardy (born 1977, Fort Worth, Texas) is an American artist and filmmaker.(2018, March 26). Hardy, K8. ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists.'' Retrieved 14 Dec. 2020, from https://www-oxfordartonline-com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/benezit/view/10.1093/ ...
, editor and critic David Velasco, painter
Doron Langberg
Doron Langberg (born 1985) is an American painter. Langberg paints in the style of genre painting and portraiture and addresses issues of gender and sexuality by making love and desire a shared experience through the surface and subjects of his pa ...
, artist partners
Edgar Mosa
Edgar Mosa (born 1986, Lisbon, Portugal) is a Portuguese-born American jeweler and visual artist. Mosa's work has been featured internationally at the Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin, Center for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and St ...
and
Joe McShea, photographer
Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations.
Tillmans was the first photog ...
, writer
Andrew Durbin
Andrew Durbin is an American poet, novelist, and editor. As of 2019, he has served as editor-in-chief of Frieze magazine. Prior to his position at Frieze, he co-founded Company Gallery, served as the Talks Curator at the Poetry Project, and serve ...
, amongst others.
Davy is a frequent musical collaborator with artist
Morgan Bassichis. Along with DonChristian Jones,
Michi Osato, and Una Osato, Bassichis and Davy have several produced musical iterations of ''
The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions
''The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions'' is a 1977 fantasy novel written by Larry Mitchell, with illustrations by Ned Asta. The novel is drawn from Mitchell's experience of queer communal living in the 1970s, with particular emphasi ...
'' a radical literary faggotry written by
Larry Mitchell in 1977. Past venues for performances have taken place at the
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
and the
New Museum.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davy, TM
School of Visual Arts alumni
School of Visual Arts faculty
Painters from New York City
1980 births
Living people
American LGBT artists
21st-century American male artists
Queer artists