Stephen Anthony Davids.

Stephen Anthony Davids is a fine artist, known primarily for making portraits using paint or ink on rare types of paper and found objects.His work provides observations of social history – rooted in present day London and paralleled with other cultures and eras – addressing questions about inclusion and equality, in relation to race, gender and socio-economic status. Solitary figures are Davids’ primary subject, and his focus is on the face, especially the eyes as a vehicle for communication and expression. His portraits are immediate, personal expressions, the result of a compulsion to make work in the moment. They are also cumulative, amounting to an interrelated body of work that is like an archive: an accretion of artistic,  cultural and historical material manifest in paintings on wood, canvas, paper and found objects.  The artist’s observation and celebration of quotidien objects is found in his reverence for folk art as well as artists who successfully transcended barriers between the contemporary art establishment and art in daily life in order to impact on society more broadly.

Stephen Anthony Davids aims for a fairer society and looks for ways to use his art to develop a conversation around inclusivity, belonging and identity. Many of the questions and observations found in his art, also arise in the work he undertakes with young people suffering from psychological and behavioural problems. He tackles this issues both in the subject matter of his artworks, as well as initiatives that provide more young people with a fairer range of options in the arts.