Michele Davidson – Born and grew up in Cape Town.  She got her BA Fine Arts degree at the University of Stellenbosch with a distinction in painting.  In 2004 she completed her Master’s degree in Community Development focusing on the use of visual art for development. Michele has had several group and solo exhibitions, and her work can be found in private and public collections. 

Michele favors the process of painting.  For her, painting is about form, composition, tone, and the enjoyment of the character of oil paint.  The subject matter is a platform or template through which to create.  Although Michele guides her artwork toward the sphere of realism, she persists on juggling the dual arms of representation and the creative process, between painting surface, painterly depiction and illustration. In her earlier works Michele would put wax on the surface of her painting, objectifying the painting.  By emphasizing the surface of the painting, Michele moved the focus away from what it depicts to how it is depicted. 

Michele’s paintings tend to reinvent the mediocrity of familiar objects, people, and everyday spaces. Michele is drawn to light and the atmosphere it creates. Her use of tone and chiaroscuro dramatizes, intensifies, and sometimes obscures her subject matter. Her manipulation of light on and around the subject is seductive; it illuminates, exaggerates, and intensifies. She often choses seemingly insignificant, unconventional objects to paint, like paperclips.  With her use of light on and around these mundane objects she provokes an emotional response to whatever object she is depicting, elevating it to the realm of etherealism; allowing it to escape the confines of our perceptions. 

Although Michele majored in painting, Michele’s artistic talent also extends to sculpture. Having studied ceramics for 3 years at Cape Town College and Sculpture at the University of Stellenbosch. In 2016 Michele completed her first sculpture, “Cold Water”. 

Michele draws her inspiration from her daughter and other children. Children have no inhibitions.  They live in a world of Heroes and Villains. They are not constrained by others’ opinions. They are curious, imaginative, creative, expressive, sensitive, explorative, and dynamic. 

Michele tries to capture this innocence and uninhibited playfulness in her sculpture. Proposing the question of what is playing out in the child’s mind. 

The mind of a child is a beautiful place, 

An Eden where many things grow, 

A garden of beauty where, sheltered by love 

Grow flowers row upon row. 

The mind of a child is a wonderful place, 

Where wishes and dreams are so real, 

Where kittens and puppies and gingerbread men 

Can actually talk and feel. 

The mind of a child is a mystical place, 

Where character grows like a tree, 

And children become either better or worse 

By action of you or of me. 

Herbert Parker