Blind Man's Journey, A : The Art of Mike Davis Hardcover – 20 Dec. 2015

Painter Mike Davis` work is clearly influenced by artists of the Northern Renaissance with a distinctly surrealist twist thrown in.This beautifully presented hardback book is a fine collection of his artworks - enigmatic echoes of 16th/17th century masterpieces (think Brueghel and Bosch) which cleverly weave old-master techniques and themes with Pop Surrealist elements all carefully rendered in intricately detailed oils, the larger paintings as filled with incident as those of the masters he reveres.The volume is illustrated in full-colour throughout, including a selection of details from the larger works and a few ink on parchment drawings.There is little text other than a general introduction, which also has a few colour photos of Davis and his studio environment.A really nice book to leaf through and a useful reference for this meticulous and interesting artist.

What a treat to get this book on the surreal narrative art of Mike Davis. Chocked full of high quality full colour images and interesting text, kept me reading and enjoying his work for hours. A book I’d go back to over and over for sure through the years.

The intimate format of this delicious book seems appropriate for Mike's creations; anything larger and you'd be crawling on the floor picking your brains up, after having your mind blown by the insane detail. Mike dives deep into the subject matter and into his craft. I don't try to analyze it, or understand it. I just enjoy getting lost in the scenes; so does my 9 year old son.

Like most of the artists who get their hooks into the back of my brain, Mike Davis has a connection to the history of art that transcends similarity or coincidence. It stems from deep intellectual and imaginative affinities, but the way in which a contemporary artist chooses to express these affinities must transcend mere fanfare of homage.Akira Yamaguchi's inventive application of classic Yamato-e and Ukiyo-e styles to examine modern Japanese society, as well as his playful fusion of traditional Far Eastern techniques with Western oil painting methods, reveals a profoundly satirical and often fantastic vision of the past, present and future of High-Low culture.Walton Ford's prodigious style emulates the art of Natural History's greatest talents, and J.J. Audubon in particular -- his interpretation of written accounts detailing encounters between man and beast use the dreamlike distortions of surrealism and Neue Sachlichkeit, forming a remarkable body of work that charts a secret history of our relationship to the natural world.Glenn Brown has mastered the 'Trompe L'Oeil' techniques pioneered during the Renaissance, but uses them in a thoroughly post-modern way. His 'super-flat' paintings are modelled on reproductions of works found in art monographs, periodicals, and glowing, high-res .jpegs; he then uses apps like Adobe Illustrator to manipulate the paintings that will be recreated on canvas. The end results are stunning and often terrifying mutations of Auerbach, Dali, John Martin, etc.Mike Davis has come closer than any artist I know of to distilling the essence of the Northern Renaissance. Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Durer and Jan Van Eyck are resurrected in his darkly whimsical compositions, combining and contrasting their cryptic symbolism with modern-day movements like Surrealism; but Davis is comfortable in the sixteenth century, using it as his laboratory and playground. The Freudian associations of Dali, Ernst and Magritte are only one way that Davis allows distant and recent art history to collide and coalesce. The work of Otto Dix and the New Objectivism, particularly the German artist's heavily allegorical and satirical paintings from the late twenties and thirties, meld Northern Renaissance sensibilities with his own darkly humorous views on war, politics, and human nature. Dix is probably the strongest singular influence on Davis and his artistic vision, even if that influence is harder to discern -- Dix himself used the styles and themes of his Teutonic and Netherlandish predecessors. And like Dix, Davis takes inspiration from Durer, styling his monogram on the famous 'A.D.' of the great German artist. But his color palette is thoroughly Flemish. His canvases have the rich ochre's and gold's of works like Bruegel's 'The Triumph of Death' or 'The War Between Carnival and Lent', and Bosch's 'The Temptations of St. Anthony'. His handling of oil is excellent, and his canvases favor the smaller works of both Flemish Masters, with a similar vocabulary of symbols with entirely different meanings. Much of the imagery from the sixteenth century has been cut adrift from its original connotations, giving it an almost dreamlike significance.Published by Last Gasp, 'A Blind Man's Journey' is another high quality, beautifully designed and constructed monograph. Mike Davis has been featured in magazines like Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose, but he's not as high profile as many of the artists on the periphery of the 'Pop Surrealism' scene, so this 120-page volume was another welcome surprise. Last Gasp started off as a head shop-turned-publisher in 1960's San Francisco, distinguishing themselves as the 'City Lights' of underground comics; they took risks on cutting edge art, and provided a home to some of the craziest, most outrageous, and often brilliant cartoonists of the time: Gilbert Shelton, Rick Griffin, and Robert Crumb, for example. They continue to defy mainstream expectations, still publishing avant garde art and comics that could qualify as 'underground'. Like their excellent books on Todd Schorr, Laurie Lipton and Robert Williams, Last Gasp has produced another attractive monograph that gives Mike Davis the attention his work deserves. Highly recommended.

Mike has such a unique viewpoint and this book is a perfect showcase. Imagine creatures weird and macabre wandering through old master's paintings and you have the start of a vivid and strange journey.

I've been a fan of Mike Davis' paintings for years and am thrilled to finally have many of them in one beautiful volume. He's bringing a classical style to modern art and it's couldn't be more gorgeous.