December/January Guest Art: John Davis

New show coming December 2025 through January 2026!

Encountering Nature: The Prints of John Davis

Show Dated: Tuesday, December 2, 2025 through Friday, January 30, 2026

First Friday Gallery Stroll Receptions, December 5, 2025,  5pm-8pm, and January 2, 2026, 5pm-8pm

Meet John Davis

The fascinating aspects of repetition, color, and form are the landmarks of design for John Davis. You will find these traits in the hand-cut and hand-pulled linocuts, which reflect this observation of this style throughout the natural world.

Biography

John H. C. Davis was born in Puerto Rico. He is the son of an American architect and a mother who was a native of Puerto Rico. The family has always had an interest in art, and he was influenced to observe design. He became interested in art from a young age, recalling class with Manuel Fontenbleau, a graphic Artist, who introduced him to screen printing when he was 12. Until his college days, he ventured to the jungle and the beaches with his brothers. His most favored subject matter continues to be focused on the birds, fish, flowers, and fauna of the coast.

He moved to the United States for college and began at Franklin Pierce College, Ringe, New Hampshire. There, his professors exposed him to an awareness of functional art and he became interested in screen printing. A move to the warmer climate of New Orleans and the South, John attended Tulane University and was educated in printmaking and art history. He supplemented his education by designing and printing T-shirts for the frequent festivals and events for sale to the students. He then worked as an apprentice to one of the publishers of Jazz and Heritage Festival and Mardi Gras posters. He also learned to professionally frame pictures, which became his career. He found the love of his life, and married. For a few years he owned a small frame shop located first on Magazine Street and then on Royal Street in the French Quarter and cared for his baby at the shop. He eventually worked as a professional picture framer. Finally, prior to leaving New Orleans for Pensacola, Florida, in 1986, he received his Bachelor of Fine Art degree from Tulane University.

John has been particularly influenced in his work by that of Kandinsky, and Alexander Caulder from whom he grasped the elements of structure and order, and also by the style of Walter Inglish Anderson from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Through recent European travels, he has been further influenced by William Morris. He first began by design and production of brightly colored, hand-painted serigraphs framed under glass. In an effort to create more depth and detail, he incorporated an artisan aspect by using a different printmaking medium, linoleum cuts. Using hand-made paper, he actually designs the print, cuts the image and using black printing ink, hand pulls each image. After drying, each image is individually painted. His work has continued to evolve and, for the last couple of decades he has been garnering a wall-full of awards.