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Sleep my Angel

Artist Dr Alan Davie (Grangemouth, Scotland, 1920 - 2014)

Date1962

Mediumlithograph

ClassificationsPrints

DimensionsPlate Size: Height: 79.2 cm, Width: 56.6 cm

AcquisitionPurchased in 1964.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG005946

Keywords

Abstract

About MeAlan Davie was born in Grangemouth, near Falkirk, the son of a schoolmaster and amateur artist who taught him to draw from childhood. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1930s.

Early in his career, he was strongly influenced by the American Abstract Expressionists such as Adolph Gottlieb and Jackson Pollock who exploit colours for their intensity and apply paint on the canvas by using dynamic, forceful brushstrokes.

Davie was also a talented Jazz musician. He learnt to play the saxophone after seeing Coleman Hawkins playing in an Edinburgh record shop. His interest in improvisation of Jazz influenced his art - this often resulted in abstract canvases.

Davie drew his inspiration from a diverse range of symbols and ideas, often taken from non-Western traditions such as Zen Buddhism which he discovered in the mid-1950s. Davie said of his approach to painting: “Sometimes I think I paint simply to find enlightenment and revelation. I do not practise painting as an Art; and the Zen Buddhist likewise does not practise Archery as an exercise of skill but as a means to enlightenment. The right Art is purposeless, aimless. The more obstinately one tries to learn how to paint for the sake of producing a work of Art, the less one will succeed."