Ted Davies, famed artist and teacher who maintains a home in Sag Harbor, will display woodblock prints of New York City at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor through October 9, 2014. Davies series is “loose and limber,” utilizing warm hues complimented by sections of black and red highlights, which recreate an earlier era in the city, in a time before cell phones where Chinese laundries and in-town gas stations were the norm.
Among Davies icons include scenes and faces from second-hand book stores, hair stylist shops and “preoccupations of the lunchtime crowd.” Davies artfully transforms the big chaos of city life into his intimate vision of the environment, detailing human nature and softening the city’s hard edges with texture, tilts, curves and loops.
A fellow printmaker and an old friend of Davies, Dan Walden, described him as a “private man, a craftsman, a thinker” and an artist who “did not toot his horn.” Walden also said that Davies printed and created a limited number of each of his designs, which required extensive and careful labor as they often involved multiple colors and textures.
Each print of Davies is hand-rubbed and conveys the artist’s sense of intimacy and honesty through specific subject matters and his technical ability to convey them.
The Romany Kramoris Gallery is located at 41 Main Street in Sag Harbor. For more information, visit kramorisgallery.com.