“…what Davina sees with her open spontaneous eyes is a transient, multicultural world in which people communicate with each other mainly by exchanging ‘things’ or going places rather than by exchanging ideas. A significant artist with a significant message” Jean Coteau, art critic journalist.
Introduction
Davina Stephens’ art is permeated by locally significant elements and atmospheres while evocating a global sensibility.
Throughout her frequent travels Davina has absorbed the aesthetic of mysticism, fed on the typical Balinese ‘non-perspective’ style and the softness of the Floating World, Japanese classics. She blurs boundaries, and emerges with a fresh and unique take that doesn’t fall short of pleasing the eye and the soul.
Her visual poetry, her evocative compositions and her use of colour, convey, through different materials, media and techniques, a unique recognisable character which took her artworks to international recognition.
Davina Stephens is associated with the 1990’s new figurative movement. She is known for her positive contemporary approach, her use of print and paint, maps and stamps, and for her compositional play of space and texture. Her works often deliver a pleasant soft decorative feeling from far, while revealing a deeper and articulated detail curation when observed closely.
Her work method proceeds by building up her paintings by layers, weaving them together in an organic tension towards profundity and multidimensionality.
‘Batik cap’, rice paper, wood block prints, the charcoals and pastel colours accompanied by a very unique use of whites and outlines, all blend seamlessly, yet staying recognisable.