Raw Arts Festival London 2005 raw art Stephen Davids

Stephen's creative journey has spanned 20 years. Born and raised in East London, his work is an eclectic mix of graphic line, composition and energy. He uses paint and line like a dancer uses his/her body. Stephen is an artist who embodies a naivety and allure through his drawings and paintings that evoke an instant emotion and reaction. Stephens’s art that is born out of a need to create and to communicate.

His work is part autobiographic as well as being a mixture of influences and styles that create a visual language that are uniquely his own. Blackness in Davids’ work is not the blackness of cultural nationalists, though it may have reflections on their intensity and anger – albeit as an emotional getaway to translate other passions – but a blackness that demands hermeneutic intervention, and respect.

His goal is to inform, through the informal use of motifs images and concepts. The tools he uses are the pen the brush and his mind. He uses composition in its purest form; raw and graphic. Lines are drawn with a finesse that evokes a tension between the paper or canvas. Colour is applied boldly with a confidence and energy that is full of passion, power and control. Stephen’s use of poetic text is drawn out of an enthusiasm to communicate what he is thinking with his audience. The ending result is work that is fun, strong and that also tells a story and a journey. A journey of a man finding his way.