Liam Davidson was born in Australia in 1948. He studied painting
at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney in the late 1960's before
relocating to Dunedin to study printmaking under the tutelage of
Marilyn Webb and Barry Cleavin. He continues to live and work in
New Zealand.
Davidson has exhibited widely in New Zealand and Australia since
1978, as well as becoming actively involved in community arts
projects, commissioned works and community arts training.
Davidson is predominantly known for his stylistically
recognisable figurative and landscape works painted in a process of
layers, often using a liquid acrylic medium with pure pigment,
calcite and Kaolin filler as both paint and bonding agent for
adhering paper
to either hardboard panels or canvas. The surface of each
layer is carefully sanded back, so that his works convey both
textural depth and a glass-like surface with none of the typical
hard edges generally associated with acrylics.
As Davidson mentions, "I have begun using more collected
pigments, earths, from here and there. I'd like to use blood and
saps and stains, but they just disintegrate. Tribal body
decoration, cave and bark paintings, tattooing and scarifying are
all inspirations as is the art of the Impressionists and Bonnard.
The human figure under the sun, especially the bright subtropical
sun of summer and the intense coastal reflected light of Pacific
shores, is particularly motivating. It's a primitive form of sun
worship and animism."