After a nine-month period of travel in Europe from 1948-9, Davie settled near London. He lived mainly off sales of his jewellery and occasional evening work as a jazz musician. Following the automatic drawing methods he had initiated in his monotypes, Davie began painting in an entirely spontaneous, unpremeditated way. This approach may be compared to jazz music.
Alan Davie (Scottish, born 1920)
Davie was born in Grangemouth, near Edinburgh and studied at Edinburgh College of Art. In 1948 he saw the work of the American Abstract Expressionists and was impressed by their intensity and freedom. Davie abandoned traditional methods of composition and subject matter and sought to free his art from premeditated decision-making. This approach owes much to the artist's interest in Zen Buddhism and there is also an analogy with jazz - Davie was a jazz saxophonist early on in his career. In the later 1950s and 1960s Davie's brushwork became more controlled and the imagery more legible. Mysterious symbols began to appear, found in sources as varied as American Indian pottery, maps, ancient rock-carvings and Aboriginal art.
