ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Much of my inspiration for my stone carvings is based in a love of Nature. I was especially close to my Grandmother, whose home was on beachfront property in Naples, Florida. As a little girl, I would spend hours collecting shells with her when our family would visit for vacation. The shell form is evident in some of my sculptures (not shown in this show). I also loved the outdoors as a child, climbing trees, building forts in summer and winter, hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, growing and tending a vegetable garden, and bird watching were all formative experiences that would help shape me as an artist, poet, environmentalist, and spiritual seeker.

Walking and hiking in nature are among my dearest passions. Living here on Bainbridge Island - this earthly paradise of the PNW, with beaches and the woods as close as a neighborhood road end, trail, or beach access. Farms also dot the landscape, keeping our community’s rural character, and offering us a healthy lifestyle, organic food choices and innumerable ways to get outdoors and appreciate our topography and natural environment.

Music too has been and remains a very important inspiration for my work. My stone sculptures are all abstract and organic in form, with a focus on color, line, textures, form, surface definition and some even make a ringing sound when tapped with my ring finger. it is one of the ways my stones talk back to me, letting me know how much to carve away and when I am close to finishing.

My prints are also abstract, and my love for color is obvious from the works on display. Color and geometric forms (the circle, triangle, square, rectangle, and line) continue to be the architecture of my print designs. I am excited to announce BIMA has recently accepted 4 of my geometric series prints entitled -The Geometry of Time- into their Permanent Collection.

I find working with color very playful and emotionally evocative, and it helps me connect in an intuitive way with my internal landscape, where words often fall short. I am also a spiritually devoted follower of Christ and feel my gift as an artist is from God, but I must do something with it. So, it is incumbent on me and my responsibility to use that talent; to not bury it or put it under a bushel. I need to share it and let it shine in the world.

One of the ways I give back to the world is to love what I do. It gives me great joy and purpose in life. Georgia O’Keeffe believed the same was true for her art. She said, “My painting [sculpture and prints for me] is what I give back to the world for what the world has given me.”

— Virginia H. Davison