Emily Davidson
Arcade
2010
oil on canvas
75 x 66
Funeral Flowers
2010
oil and collage on panel
10 x 14
Artist Statement
My recent paintings depict scenes of monument and void, of relic and ruin, of
crumbling façade or vast landscape. I generate these images from first-hand
experience, as I encounter the scenes like a contemporary flâneur.
This approach reflects an examination of the historical within the present; the
images aim to conflate the past, present, and future, the source becoming
indistinct, so as to examine the contemporary as if rooted in a distant but
familiar history. Resulting, the works strive to capture something of grandeur—
extraordinary, romantic, in contrast to a ruinous, desolate lull.
Recalling an experience in paint then becomes an act of re-creation, of
resurrection, and a persistent revival of lost narrative. The paintings often depict
a fictive space where image and architecture exist as fleeting memory, an index
of the moment of being there. The image becomes a placeholder for an initial
experience, and the paintings serve as souvenirs to mortality, nature, nostalgia.