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Philip DARK
He has studied art and photography at the Slade School, London, and at Yale University, New Haven, and produces both photograhic work based on anthropological research in Africa and in Pre-Columbian sites and in Pacific cultures, as well as drawings and paintings. In Cornwall he has shown his work at the Falmouth Art Gallery and at St Mawes Castle.
Jackie DASH
A member of Taking Space, a collective of contemporary women artists exhibiting in West Cornwall and elsewhere for some twenty years since the 1990s. As a new member in 2009, she uses her paintings to express a close connection with the wildness of nature.
Ruth DAVENPORT
At the 1924 Show Day at St Ives, this painter showed Early Summer in the Woods (an oil), and also exhibited some 'most interesting' needlework pictures, which reminded the reviewer of Mrs DELANY's paper reproduction of flowers (now carefully preserved in the British Museum): 'Miss Davenport shows some exquisite needlework designed by herself, and is experimenting in lacquer and papier-mache work.'
In the Christmas Show of 1926, she is listed as exhibiting Crafts at Newlyn.
As late as 1937, she held a joint show of imaginative works in St Ives with the painter Enraght MOONY. In his Social History of St Ives (2009) Tovey recounts some anecdotes about Davenport and her behaviour in relation to her tenancy of one and then two of the studios at Piazza, which lead one to conclude that she must have been mentally unstable. Both John PARK and Herbert TRUMAN had reason to complain bitterly of her antisocial behaviour, as did the fishermen in the netlofts on site. Eventually in 1939 she was evicted from both No 6 and No 7. (Tovey, pp161-4)
Lynn DAVEY
Lynn Davey is listed as a regular exhibitor at the Lander Gallery, Truro (2011).
A W DAVIDSON
In 1901 at NAG the artist displayed The Braes of Balqulidden. The following year at NAG he sold two untitled pictures to a visiting Canadian (who also purchased from Ethel Louise RAWLINS and Alfred Joseph Warne BROWNE), as well as showing A Surrey Common.
Other titles sold at NAG include Penzance & Rye (1903), Moonlight and Landscape (1906), The Avon at Brent and Hoar Frost (1909), Roses (1910), and in 1913 The Flower Market and The Valley of the Avon. From Newlyn in 1905 he moved on, giving an exhibiting address in Devon (1907), in Garelockhead, Scotland (1914) and London by 1920. But he clearly returned work to Newlyn to be exhibited for more than a decade and up until 1913, when his final showing at NAG indicate two paintings were shown.
Charles Grant DAVIDSON
The artist was born in London, and studied under the Victorian watercolourist John Absolon (1815-1895). After his marriage to Ann, he is recorded as living at Redhill, Surrey for about thirty years before arriving at St Buryan, Cornwall in 1880. They were the parents of the artist Charles Topham DAVIDSON, also a landscape painter, who worked locally and elsewhere.
From 1882-84 Davidson lived at Falmouth. In 1891 he was living at Trevena House, Melville Road, Falmouth, and then Perranporth in 1898 after which he returned to Falmouth where he remained until his death.
Most of his paintings were exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society (over 800 of his works were shown), and he also exhibited at the RCPS Jubilee Exhibition in 1882 at Falmouth.
Charles Topham DAVIDSON
The artist son of Charles Grant Davidson. Still to be researched.
Jessie Y DAVIDSON
A painter of figures with an address in Liverpool in 1885, she was sending-in from a London (Kensington) address in 1892 (RA In the Shade).
She exhibited at Nottingham Castle with the Cornish Painters in 1894, indicating that she may have spent time in the district during the interim period.
Alan DAVIE
Davie was born in Grangemouth, Scotland and studied at the Edinburgh College of Art from 1937-1940. After the war (his service was in the Royal Artillery) he exhibited first at the Edinburgh Bookshop, before becoming a professional jazz musician. He married the potter Janet Gaul (1948) before setting out on his travels that included Europe (shows in Venice and Florence) and then returning to teach at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1950.
Alan Davie was aided by Patrick HERON in finding a cottage at Treen, Crean Bottom, near Lands End when he and his wife arrived in West Cornwall after years spent in St Lucia, West Indies. Referring to himself in the third person in soft Scottish accents, he and his late wife Billie (until her death) have remained in the cottage, though also living in Hertford.
The collater of the Paisnel Gallery catalogue (2009) remarks on Davie's interest in Zen Buddhism, and how this inspired his spontaneity and intuition - with many of his paintings 'having no pre-considered composition or even titled until completed.'
