John R. Davenport
About Painting
The inspiration for many of my paintings is my attraction to the wonders and mysteries of the Ice Age landforms. But there is more.
Painting for me is about getting the "feeling of the place" and reacting all the while to color resonance and light. Painting is about the exploration of color. Color creates moods, expresses feelings, and can develop spatial definition.
Then there is the physical act of painting, applying oil paint to linen. When a painting is going well, it is so much about responding to the visceral qualaity of "painting" itself. "Painting" in this case becomes the "representation".
"What I think now is that it doesn't matter what you paint. What matters is the painting." Fairfield Porter
"Colour, above all, and perhaps more than drawing is a means of liberation." Henri Matisse
Media I Work With
Oil paint, soft pastel, photography
Rio Grande, 16x20
Painting the Rio Grande
High above me the mesa top looms while below
the shallow river runs deep blue green
threading teal, cinnabar green and cobalt blue
against banks yellow faded chamisa, red tinged salt cedar
and inclines dotted by stands of juniper and pine.
On the easel the linen canvas waits;
(paint the whole scene, I think to myself)
painting loose, painting simply, swaths of brush work
connecting the massive sun-hot-mesa to this cool river,
one shape to the next, structural pieces fit to
one another, framing up this cavernous space.
Another loaded brush carries a copse of cottonwoods
brushed in, then partially wiped out, brushed in time
to the shifting light. Small brush marks release a tracery
of red violet shadows beside sunlit yellow grasses.
Colors pop. The brush scumbles, laying in a slow swelling incline
juxtaposed to quicker foreground rhythms
of bottom thickets, near leafless, spinney tangles at the river’s edge.
Standing before the easel, in a zone beyond conscience thought,
the image emerges…real quiet, quiet within, quiet without…
except that is, for the moving force of the river.
John R Davenport March 29, 2020
Painting in Progress
The Environment in Which I Work
Biography
Education
1962-1970 Attended University of Wisconsin, Madison;
Bachelors of Science in Art Education, Masters of Art in Studio Art, Masters of Fine Art in Studio Art
1979-1989 Attended University of Wisconsin, Madison; PhD in Educational Administration and Aesthetics
Built the Rolling Oaks Studio in 1994.
Began working as a full time artist in Fall 2001.
Corporate Collections
University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, Madison, WI
University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, WI
Marshfield Clinic, Wisconsin Rapids, WI
Aspirus Hospital, Wausau, WI
University of Wisconsin Student Union, Madison, WI
International Bank of Amherst, Amherst, WI
Gimme Shelter Construction, Amherst, WI
Keller & Associates, Neenah, WI
Riverside Medical Center, Waupaca WI