Christopher Davison

To understand what makes something beautiful is an attempt to understand the logic of the beauty that exists behind nature. If you can create that logic from scratch then it's like you can create work that appears as if it just showed up, the ultimate goal being to make work that seems like it's always existed, like nature.
-Christopher Davison

Christopher Davison is a Philadelphia-based artist currently teaching printmaking and drawing at Tyler School of Art. He has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and had his first solo exhibition in 2009 at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York.

Beauty as a subject of investigation can produce “nightmarish” results. In Davison's work, the viewer may feel as though he has invaded a private dream world. While his paintings and etchings may seem to recall surrealists like Max Ernst, Davison does not identify as a surrealist artist.

Davison’s work expresses the struggle and bliss of experiencing beauty. Many of his works portray death as a potentially beautiful event, as a means of confronting society’s aversion to the very concept of dying. Death holds an allure for Davison, and in his work he feels the vibrancy and color of Life in contemplating its antithesis. On some level, his paintings seduce the viewer into joining in that contemplation.