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the gibbes museum of art
Washerteria, Hale County, Alabama, 2002, by Julyan Davis; Oil on canvas; 20x36 inches; Courtesy of the artist.

Julyan Davis

May 23, 2018 - June 6, 2018

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“I paint for storytellers—novelists, songwriters, poets. I also paint for those who love history. There has always been a narrative thread in my work. Even when a scene was notably empty of incident, I have strived for a sense that something vital happened here, or that something will”.

Julyan Davis is an English-born artist who has painted the American South for over twenty-five years. He received his art training at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. In 1988, having completed his B.A. in painting and printmaking, he traveled to the South on a painting trip that was also fueled by an interest in the history of Demopolis, Alabama and its settling by Bonapartist exiles.

Davis now lives in Asheville, North Carolina. His work is exhibited internationally and is in many public and private collections. Recent acquisitions include the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, the Greenville County Museum of Art (South Carolina), the Morris Museum (Augusta, GA) and the North Carolina Governor’s Mansion and Western Residence. Davis is known for recording many aspects of the vanishing South—from its architecture to its folklore. His series Dark Corners: The Appalachian Murder Ballads—interpreting traditional American ballads through the contemporary South—has been touring museums with accompanying lectures and musical performances. Currently, he is working on the Mermaid Storm series, exploring a Lowcountry emancipation tale, in collaboration with poet Glenis Redmond.

His work will be on view in the Rotunda side gallery exhibition, Vanishing Charleston.

OPEN-STUDIO HOURS

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23: 2 - 8PM

MAY 24 - JUNE 6: 1PM - Museum Close