Colin Davidson, artist: 'I've a deep conviction that victims of the Troubles were really sold out'
Colin Davidson and one of the figures in his new exhibition at the RHA.
Colin Davidson’s Stranger exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin features six larger than life-size human figures. Some are recognisably male, and others female, but otherwise there is no clue as to their identity; all are faceless and unclothed. The figures are arranged in a loose circle; they appear to be emerging from the floor, and more surprisingly, to be composed of great globs of paint.
“It’s a new process I’ve developed over the last five years,” says Davidson. “I sort of joke about it and say there wasn't a YouTube tutorial, but really, there’s no one else doing this. I had an idea about 20 years ago; I was very aware of the viscous sculptural quality that oil paint could bring to a painting, and I was thinking about the potential of making paintings in three dimensions and using oil paint to sculpt with rather than clay or wax. I had in my mind that I could create these three-dimensional figures that would not be terribly distinct, but would be more like presences, made from paint.”
