Art on the range
Retired surgeon takes on new operation: his own art gallery
by Elizabeth Jones Wolf

Jay Davenport, a former orthopedic surgeon who practiced for nearly 30 years in Minnesota's Iron Range, used to decorate the hallways of his offices with his own watercolor paintings. When patients were told that the framed works were Davenport originals, many would joke that he might have missed his true calling.

"I didn't quite know how to take that," Davenport laughs.

Now, he has a chance to work on that calling full-time. After retiring from his orthopedic surgery practice in 1997, Davenport designed and built his own art studio in 2002, behind his home in rural Great Scott Township, Minn., between Buhl and Mountain Iron. And he just recently opened an adjacent art gallery, where he displays and sells his works.

Davenport, 70, grew up in Kansas and trained first as a physical therapist. He later became an orthopedic surgeon and moved to the Iron Range in 1970. He spent his entire career in the region, with offices in Virginia and Hibbing.

And yet he's always been interested in art, he says. Between 1958 and 1960, Davenport lived in New York City, and those two years served provided important--and lasting - artistic inspiration.

"I was there during the awakening of the Beat Generation," he says, "I became very excited and involved in the art scene"

He experimented with woodcuts, drawing, and watercolors, but a "lack of courage" kept him from making art a career. He also liked medicine, and he found comfort in its professional stability.

"Being a physician seemed like more of a guarantee than being an artist," he reflects. "I preferred the structure [of a career in medicine]."

Nevertheless, Davenport continued to create drawings and paintings, frequently carrying an easel into the woods on his 40-acre tree farm. He collected books about art and visited art galleries (a particular favorite is the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Neb.).

"Medicine and art may appear to be very different, but they're not that far apart," he claims. "Both require focus, commitment - and the right materials." He notes that several former physicians went on to have successful careers in the arts, including W. Somerset Maugham, who abandoned medicine to pursue what became a very successful literary career in the 1920s.

Davenport, whose own artistic influences include John Singer Sargent and Winslow Horner, says he always has a work or two in progress. His newest series, entitled "Born in America," features watercolors of Native Americans based on archival photographs by Edward S. Curtis, Carl Moon, and George W. Scott.

He encourages interested individuals to visit his gallery, which is open by appointment. For more information, call 218-258-3664.