Douglas Davies – 80 years' work
FOR MANY PEOPLE, an 80th birthday is a milestone celebrated with family and friends. For artist Douglas Davies, it will also mark a landmark exhibition.
"Being an artist is the most freeing thing you can do I actually lived this life – I didn't just dream it
This is what I wanted to do, and I've done it — and that's quite satisfying,” he says over the phone from his home in Skirling in the Scottish Borders.
Although his actual birthday falls later this year in November, the exhibition opens in June.
Davies has been an artist for most of his life. Even as a child, he was constantly drawing and painting. "My wife reminded me the other day that, even as a schoolboy, I worked in an art supply shop in Castle Street. I sold pencils and materials under the counter, working for a terrifying man called Mr Ramage. People like Anne Redpath used to come into the shop.”
He originally studied ceramics at Edinburgh College of Art before going on to lecture in ceramics at Glasgow School of Art.
"When I was 40, I decided to quit teaching and become a full-time painter.”
At the time, Davies was living in Skirling, where he had a studio and ceramic kiln.
"I'd been painting for a while, and painting gradually took over. I was making fewer and fewer pots. Eventually I stopped making ceramics altogether, partly because my kiln came to the end of its working life.”
Much of his work has been inspired by travels to France and Spain.
"I've always spent a lot of time in the south of France and Spain, mostly on walking holidays, but I was always sketching. He was also fortunate enough to be one of the first people to benefit from
a placement at the first Charles Rennie Mackintosh Residency at Collioure, in 2007.
"I love Catalunya. It's so rugged there. In the foothills of the Pyrenees, and the people are very much Catalan, a bit like the Scottish,” he said. "There is so much inspiration there, whether it's the vineyards or by the sea, the Mediterannean and the light and the colours. There is a place called Banyuls, and it has a hill called Matisse Hill. The sea there is often referred to as Matisse blue – it truly is a special place for painting. And of course the climate is wonderful too.
"I'm always armed with a sketch book, as I tend not to work en plein air as it means carting off the stuff. So everything I paint is from sketch books, and it then translates from the sketch book onto a painting”, he added.
As he rightly points out the business from transferring from a sketch book to a painting that is a creative process in itself.
"The majority of my paintings in this show are from Scotland, the East Coast, St Abbs, a wonderful fishing village, the rugged east coast of Scotland is also terrific.
"I have many influences, Bonnard and Matisse,
Matisse's life in the south of France can't really help but be an inspiration. In terms of colour some of these guys have absolutely nabbed it”, he said.
Explaining his process, he says simply "I'm a painter and I don't construct in my head first – I let the paint and the drawing do what it wants to do", he says matter of factly, rather like the same way he describes his teaching method.
"Teaching, I did enjoy, but as the phrase goes, I didn't so much teach as I set things in motion so learning could happen”, he said.
Davies has had many exhibitions over the years and is sad that this probably will be his last.
"I actually love exhibiting, I like the process of getting ready for an exhibition, I like seeing the process up on the wall, once its up there it's for the punters to enjoy”, he said.
Asked whether he has sold to any famous people, he jokes: "The RSW have sold my work for many years but because of confidentiality they don't tell me to whom, so I might have sold to George Clooney? Who knows!
Check out the show for yourself at The Dundas Street Gallery June 29 – July 4. 2026.
