Ian Davenport was born in Sidcup, Kent in 1966. He studied at Goldsmiths' College of Art in London, graduating in 1988. In that year, he participated in Freeze, the exhibition curated by Damien Hirst. His first solo exhibition was held at Waddington Galleries in 1990, and in the same year his work was also seen in The British Art Show, which toured to Leeds City Art Gallery and the Hayward Gallery, London. Ian Davenport showed in the near-legendary “Freeze” exhibition, organised by Damien Hirst, in 1988 and he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1991. But as his paintings have evolved over two decades, his central concerns of colour and abstraction, experiment and the everyday, have remained strikingly consistent. Poured Lines exemplifies the simple delight of his very best work.

Davenport’s work is abstract, reflecting an ongoing preoccupation with the materiality of paint and the process of painting, but at the same time is inspired by the nature and look of everyday urban life. The colours of cars, neon signs, clothes and buildings lead the artist to a response through the medium he has chosen: essentially household paint. Davenport’s work becomes part of the world he celebrates rather than a representation of it, at once open and unpretentious.

Davenport experiments with paint, pouring straight from the can or by syringe, blowing paint with electric fans, dripping it from carpentry nails and dressmakers pins. Such is the technical inventiveness in Davenport’s work which constitutes a return to first principles, a sheer delight in materials to hand and an infectious enthusiasm for the discovery of what can be done with them. “I'm interested to see how intense or subtle a colour the paintings can hold. In this country the bright colours you see do tend to come from commercial things. Cars, signs, removal vans I think the paintings are about the tension of opposites. Between, say, a very large and physical painting having a side to it which is also very delicate. I have to take the painting to the point where I feel completely in control of the material and after that I can let go to an extent. I need control in order to have that freedom.”

Ian Davenport’s 48 metre-long painting Poured Lines transforms the tunnel beneath a railway bridge in Southwark, close to Tate Modern. The painting’s numerous vitreous enamel panels were created in a German factory where they were baked at fearsomely high temperatures. This film follows the artist as he creates this remarkable public artwork.
Like all of Ian Davenport’s work, Poured Lines rigorously explores the qualities and possibilities of paint but is at the same time a joyful and exuberant composition. It also responds to the city around it, enhancing the colours and movements of a busy road. "The first thing the public sees is the colour, then hopefully over a period of time people walking past it everyday will be able to see subtleties and colour and textures."

Whether or not the enamel paint will resist the inevitable graffiti is yet to be seen - Southwark Council is nervous about calling it "vandal proof", for fear of attracting challengers.

"I make my paintings by using the organic nature of paint," Davenport says. "I control liquid, I use colour, and I try to choreograph these different elements together. There's a lot of internal rigour to the process, but at the same time it is about chance."

 Poured Lines reveals luminous hues on a bright white background. As the lorries thunder through this deafening space, subtle lighting makes the artwork glow.

From the other side of the road, the row of panels - some bright, some pastel, some frenetic, some calm - produce a wave-like effect across the trajectory of the painting. Shining through the smog, it is a hugely welcome - and just plain huge - addition to this borough's ever-burgeoning "artscape”

The making of a Davenport painting is a very physical process: part painting, part performance. He begins by pouring household gloss paint onto MDF or aluminium panels that are then flipped or tipped to move paint across and off the surface.

Put into words it sounds like a simple sequence and the resulting paintings with their seductive shine certainly have an immediate appeal. But they are also more complex than such a basic explanation suggests. Central to their success is the point at which they nearly go wrong: the tension of a fine line where colours kiss. They a have presence, the power to transform the room they inhabit, giving a different perspective to the space that surrounds them. Davenport's use of dripped paint and gravity has been compared to similar techniques employed by Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis in the 1950's and 1960s.

Turner Prize-nominated abstract artist Ian Davenport has just completed a dazzling large-scale art work for the University of Warwick.
The piece is one of the artist's renowned paint-poured art works, created by dribbling thin straight lines of paint down a wall.
His paintings of this style have previously been created for such impressive places as Tate Liverpool and Tate Britain and this is the first time he's made one in Coventry.
Unique technique- The shimmering curtain of colour was created by pouring lines of paint down a huge 30 x 35-foot wall.
The bright colours are combined to produce a striking lined wall painting.
The technique of “pouring paint down walls” makes the physical process of producing the work sound deceptively simple.
Davenport works with paint that drips and flows, but he calculates the effect of each colour on the next very carefully. He uses acrylic paint that flows freely and applies it using a syringe at the top edge of the wall

The University of Warwick commissioned the work - with lottery funding - in the new Maths and Statistics building.
The university saw a link between the courses based there and Davenport's process, as his piece shows interest in the physical properties of paint and gravity.

Davenport also saw this connection and said: "The piece is ‘public art’ and is about the physical relationship of art, colour and the viewer. It’s about how people react to colour and the relationship of colour with the viewer.
"Conceptual art has had a long history of exploring theoretical ideas, such as abstract mathematics, in sensory form, providing the perfect basis for this type of exploration."

The vast wall of glittering colour provides a magnificent centrepiece to the architectural spaces of the new building.
Ian Davenport's colourful shiny paintings never fail to create a huge visual impact. He has a real ability to demonstrate the expressive possibilities of abstract paintings.
The piece will be part of the University of Warwick’s educational outreach Colour Trail and can be see in the new Maths and Statistics building.

He covered a whole wall of Tate Britain with hypnotic lines of rainbow hues for the Days Like These exhibition in 2003.

A darker, glossier abstract currently hangs opposite Rembrandt and Guido Reni in the National Gallery's Passion for Paint exhibition. It looks like a kind of colour dance. In fact, the most frequent analogy to Davenport's work is a musical one.

He takes it up: "It's like disco," he says. "Very dancy, very rhythmic." Or, as he's called it in the past, "Josef Albers meets Saturday Night Fever".

A graduate of Goldsmith's art college, Davenport was one of the few painters to emerge out of the now-legendary Damien Hirst-curated Freeze exhibition of 1988 ("Really, very few people saw it," he says, laughing).

A hit from the start, he secured his 1991 Turner Prize nomination at the age of 25. His art bridges the funky, instant-impact aesthetics of the Hirst brigade and more traditional tastes, and his gallery, Waddington's, favours painters of an older generation, Peter Blake and Craigie Aitchison included. In fact, Davenport's most obvious forebears are the abstracts of the American colour-field painters of the 1950s.

But Davenport is also passionate about pop and cartoons. Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote get into the conversation. "And I lift a lot of colours from The Simpsons," he says, proudly. These he finds in the standard palette of household emulsion, his medium of choice for his indoor work. According to critic and fan Michael Bracewell, Davenport is where "high Modernism meets Texas homecare". Although on a far larger scale than previous pieces, the Southwark painting is typical of Davenport's current way of working. "I've been making paintings like these along similar lines for about 10 years," he says, oblivious to the pun. (Before that, he was more into blobs and circles, a serene set of "arch" paintings being the most impressive result.)

Young British Artists or YBAs  also Brit artists and Britart  a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists derived from the Sensation Saatchi Gallery Exhibition.

How to Choose a Painting.

There is massive information in books and in the net about how to choose a painting.
According to my experience, there are two kind of art buyers:
The emotional ones, those who suddenly fall in love or feel an inexplicable impact by a painting. They buy by intuition and passion. They are not worried at all about the location at home and colour matches with their furniture. Sometimes they simply leave the painting against a wall while waiting for the inspiration about the final placement.
If you are concerned about the colours of your room, the armchairs or the curtains and their possible combination with a painting, you belong to the second group of buyers, a lot more rational and less interested in art. Any decoration magazine will provide you directions on choosing a painting that matches with the colour of your curtains.

If you can afford it buy originals where you can. The up and coming artists works are very well priced. Try local art shows, avoid art galleries the price is hiked to pay for there posh galleries. You can access the artists through Google and contact them direct. Or try www.artsability.co.uk.

Buy what you like! don't give houseroom to something that someone else thinks you should buy.

Be careful what medium you buy, if you move house be very careful how you pack, We suggest acrylic on canvas its more forgiving than paper.
 

Ian Davenport poured lines painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £ 179.99

SALE Price £97

Davenport poured lines on black painting on rolled canvas painted with artists acrylic paint. Hand painted copy.

30" x 40" canvas

R.R.P. £179.99

SALE Price £97

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