Jay Davenport, of Mountain Iron, the featured artist at the Edge Center Gallery in Bigfork from May 29 to June 28, enjoys making art so much that he considers it “play”. When you see his prints, drawings and paintings you will realize that years of reading art history and viewing art in galleries and museums have trained this artist for his own artwork. Because Davenport’s day job was as an Orthopedic Surgeon until 1997, his artwork was for fun. He has been able to “play” full time since then, saying; “I continue to explore the artistic possibilities of wood cut prints, watercolor paintings, charcoal drawings and recently oil paintings.”

The work in the exhibit will be a retrospective with early wood cut prints from 1963 to 1978, watercolor landscapes from 1982 to 1994 and watercolor portraits from 2001 to 2005. Also included will be more recent works.

Davenport was influenced by 19th century portraiture. This is most evident in "Born in America," a series of larger than life watercolor portraits of Native Americans based on archival photographs by legendary photographers Edward S. Curtis, Carl Moon, George W. Scott and others. Davenport explains, “I made them larger than life in scale to give them a more dominating and forceful effect on the viewer and minimize the stereotype of the noble savage or the heathen savage that was the traditional presentation.” His interest in these portraits began as a personal search. “I began collecting copies of archival photographs of Native Americans after receiving a photograph of my great grandmother taken in the 1860s. My father understood she was a Native American and I wanted to compare her facial features with other Native Americans of the various tribes. I noticed how much these photographs differed from the paintings of 19th Century artists George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, and George Bird King, occasionally of the same subject.”

One of Davenport’s influences in art came from a close friend many years ago. “I became interested in the art of carving and printing wood blocks as a medical student at Kansas University when a fellow classmate, Mike Carmichael, who was an academically trained artist, needed help printing a 4' x 8' woodcut he had recently completed. As I watch the process of his art production he encouraged me to try my hand. We became fast friends and our families moved to Minnesota, after completing our medical training, where he practiced as a radiologist and I an orthopedic surgeon. We continued to do woodcuts and assisted each other in prints until he died just a few years into his medical practice having never been recognized as the great artist he was. The woodcuts "Norway Pine", "The Loon" and "White Tail Deer" were done as a tribute to him.”

Davenport’s art has mainly been either portraiture or landscapes. Some of the watercolor landscapes that Davenport concentrated on before painting the “Born in America” series are also be on exhibit. “I was fascinated by the mercurial behavior of this medium, the occurrence of happy and unhappy incidents and the spontaneity that this technique required contrasted so strongly with the calculation and skill necessary in executing woodcuts,” said Davenport.

At Play in the Fields of Art will be in the Edge Center Gallery from May 29 to June 28. The Gallery is open from 1:00 to 4:00 on Thursdays and Saturdays and 1:00 to 7:00 on Fridays. The Opening Reception is on May 30 from 5:00 to 7:00. Jay Davenport will be there to talk to you and offer you a chance to play at art by adding to a group painting. If that is not enough, refreshments will be served and this is all free.

For more information about the Gallery, go to http://www.the-edge-center.org or about Jay Davenport, go to http://www.davenportartstudio.com .