From the mid-1990s Davie made a number of large landscape and cityscape paintings. The spiralling form on the right of the canvas derives from the large stone slab from the Gavr Inis Gallery Grave in Baden, southern France. Similar motifs are also found in Caribbean and Aboriginal art, and it is this common ground between different, apparently unrelated civilizations and cultures which fascinates Davie. The mask-like head in the centre is taken from a cave painting and may, in its original form, depict a sorcerer.
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.
![The Alchemist's Mirror No. 1 [Opus 1357]](http://www.nationalgalleries.org/media/42/collection/GMA 4325.jpg)
