LEE BAXTER DAVIS FEBRUARY 2 - MARCH 11 2006 CURATED BY GARY PANTER
CUE ART FOUNDATION
We are honored to host this exhibition of work by Lee Baxter Davis, generously curated by fellow artist Gary Panter. Mr. Davis, an artist who has devoted many years to the teaching of painting and drawing, has received much admiration from his contemporaries not only for such generosity, but also for his unique artistic voice. Panter's appreciation of Davis' work demonstrates just such admiration. CUE appreciates that geographic location can sometimes limit an artist's exhibition possibilities elsewhere, thus CUE is pleased to offer Mr. Davis the opportunity for his first solo exhibition in New York. Mr. Panter and we, together, wish him a future of fulfillment and success.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT The historian, Paul Johnson, states that the Romans were reluctant to use labor saving methods, even when available, for fear of unemployment and discontent. For the most part human energy was the chief source of power. Of course the Black Death did away with that and technology took its place, giving rise to the third estate and the discovery of the New World. I mention this because these works exhibited are the result of my own gut level instincts and human power. When you work with symbols, as I do, spontaneity is the compass of method and little regard is given to the restrictive demands of the estates, first, second or third. What then could be my purpose? To whose patronage should I appeal? Thomas Merton said of the symbol, as defined by the ancient tradition that it (symbol) does not teach or point to, but is. In the quest for the "is", he adds, you can be�any kind of S.O.B., but to find it, don't be successful. In other words, to spontaneously and honestly dredge up the symbolic image one must avoid the super-ego demands of success and be willing to deny employment for the sake of contentment. This romantic adaptation is, of course, somewhat foolish and is the result, I must confess, of my all too human ego and energy and the obsession to find an essence that is non-reductive. To achieve this foolish goal is, for me, a redemptive act. The pieces selected for this exhibit, for the most part, have been done recently \vith a few earlier drawings included. For many years I taught printmaking as well as drawing and the nostalgic aspect of those early p1ints as remembered by the curator of this exhibit, have been excluded. For this, I apologize to both Gary and any other ex-student, especially those of the old "Lizard Cult" days who might happen to see these drawings. By associating myself with the noble Romans in the introduction of this statement, I have sought to justify my decision to choose a method of work that gives direct access to the pristine space of the psychic window, the old p.p. of the paper support. In so doing, what I have gained for my imagination is a certain freedom. However, evidenced by the use of line rendering, concern for detail and the book-print narrative design, these painting-dra\vings are the children of that etching and engraving tradition and are influenced by the somewhat dark styles of Piranesi, Blake, Kathe Kolhvitz and Leonard Baskin. The search for an honest pictorial illusion that gives substance to that which exists but may not have form has for me resulted in a kind of alchemy. This hermetic soup comes from the following facts and visual encounters. I was born in 1939 and have therefore been marked by Plastic Man, Black Hawks, Donald Duck and Friends, Mad Comics and Pogo Possum, seasoned by the literary mazes of the Bible, Edgar Allen
Poe, vVilliam Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O'Connor. All of this has been garnished over the
years by the violent and mysterious images depicted in certain holy cards such as Saint Sebastian and Saint
Lucy, not to mention the Crucifix. Add to this mix a host of Virgin Mary images and cap it off ,vith June Bugs
on the church steps with the oil wells chug chugging the tune of high tech energy. Stir up this broth of
passion and what you have is the mystification of the past.
The reoccuning theme of this exhibition is the conflict between observed biological facts and
certain metaphysical models of paradise, or the reality of death and concept of immortality. Herein lies the source of the drive and scuffle of the pursuit of my imagination. This transformation in symbolism, though
lacking any labor saving virtues, accommodates the search for a surface upon which to place flesh and blood,
providing a lever against existential fears. Besides drawing has become a habit.
This mystification of the past finds its framework and rationalization in the WWII "good guy
versus bad guy" segue that takes the force of the antique. The antique firearm or dining room table that has
been passed down from generation to generation is not made up of just their materials, oak and steel, but
contain ,vithin themselves the past and are open to the eyes of the future. Look closely at this exhibit of mine and you will find traces of the Great Cosmic Rift served up as a main course like a dish of St. Lucy's eyes.
Per istam santam....... per visum cleliquisti.
A couple of years ago in the U ffizi, while looking at Botticelli's "Birth of Venus", the movie
"Blood Simple" came to mind. In this movie, the private detective's monologue in the opening scene goes
something like this, "In Russia everyone pulls together. That's the theory anyway. Down here in Texas, you're on your own."
I am on my own. Trying to teach student artists all those years, we figured out how to make
images. How clever can you get? How human can you be? "Yes," Botticelli says, "We worship the same
muse, you in your way, and I in hers." Blood has flowed; the crisis has passed. Lee Baxter Davis Greenville, TX
2006
CURATOR'S STATEMENT
In Commerce, Texas, in the early 1970s, Lee Baxter Davis was my drawing and intaglio teacher. He would lecture from table-top, the topic elusive; a hare in the big thicket, eluding the dogs and bullets of Lee's intergalactic, metaphysical, mystical, rational, post-rational, verbal ambuscade. Waving his arms frantically and exhorting us to see beyond the maya of what passes for life in the consumerist suburbs and like-thinking modes of tv watching American towns, Lee struck a Blakean figure. South of I-30, Lee resurrects and dissects medieval truths and misconceptions that he contemplates in the landscape of dry creek beds, eroded cow path, scrubby woods, pastures and ponds. There, saints and sinners and the ill at ease may be portrayed as crows, mosquitoes, flounder or gar, the ignored fauna of East Texas awakened for a magical walk far from the concrete interstate and towards the nearby rule of nature and being. Lee's art is a revelation. A falling away of scales. Therein, William Blake and Hieronymus Bosch meet in East Texas at Lee Baxter Davis's kitchen table. A mystic and an artificer of metaphoric worlds in his speech and in his careful, obsessively crafted, watercolor, ink drawings and etchings, Lee reveals; the wheels of karma, the great mandala, the juggernaut, biologic and linguistic codexes; the light and the darkness, spectra; warmth and coldness: the primal issues that ultimately refuse to hide and step boldly into his handspun light. Gary Panter
!i: Game, 2005
& collage, 36"x 40"
El Paso, 2005 Ink wash & collage, 44" x 34"
Family Tree, 2005 Ink, watercolor & collage, 36"x 44"
Fielding the Rainbow, 2005 Ink. waterco or & collage, 29 1/2" x 21 1/2"
Hood, 2005 Pen, ink & collage, 28" x 20" (diptych)
Money from Home, 2004 Ink & watercolor. 21 1/2" x 29"
Museum of Natural History, 2005 Ink wash & collage, 45"x 36"
Odyssus in Austria, 2005
Ink wash & co lage, 34"x 36"
Sideshow, 2005 Pen, ink & collage, 28" x 20"
The Crisis is Past, 2004
Ink & collage, 33" x 42"
The Idiot Self, 2005 Ink wash & collage, 40 1/2" x 36"
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Up on the Slopes, 1993 Graphite, nk & collage, 26"x 20"
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BI OS
LEE BAXTER DAVIS
Lee Baxter Davis was born at Bryan, Texas on the 20th of October
in 1939. He enlisted in the regular army out of high school and served with the 31st Infantry Regiment in Korea. Afterwards he attended college and graduated with a master's degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has taught drawing and printmaking at East Texas State University for the last thirty years. Now retired, Davis serves as the assistant pastor of St William the Confessor Catholic Church, Greenville, Texas, having been ordained to the Order of Permanent Deacons for over twenty-five years. He is married and works in his studio at home. His prints and drawings have been exhibited throughout the United States and are included in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. This is his first exhibit in New York City.
GARY PANTER
Gary Panter is a painter and cartoonist living in Brooklyn. He has
a degree in painting from East Texas State University. In the 1980s he was nominated for 5 Emmy awards and the winner of 3 Emmies for the set design of Pee Wee's Playhouse, a surreal kids show that ran on CBS television.
In 2000 he was awarded a Chrysler Design Award for innovation in design. He has shown
paintings at Gracie Mansion Gallery and Sandra Gering Gallery in New York, Dunn and Brown in Dallas, Overheat and Bape galleries in Tokyo and many others. He is currently one of 15 cartoonists featured in the traveling group show "Masters of American Comics" at the Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2005-2006.
CUE ART FOUNDATION MISSION CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educaÂ
tional programs for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the country.
These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together by the
Foundation's season of exhibitions, public lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships
and stipends afford the next generation of art professionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-making
and exhibition processes. CUE's 2000 sq. ft. galle1y and offices, located in New York's Chelsea gallery
district, serves as the base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE.
The Foundation's exhibition season gives unknown or under-recognized artists profesÂ
sional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring commercial galleries, without the usual
financial restraints. CUE does not promote a p'articular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only require that exhibiting artists must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have received minimal recent public exposure.
CUE's Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts
education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition
curators. The curators, in turn, nominate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout
the exhibition process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both the Advisory Council
and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and educational programs.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Gregory Amenoff
Theodore S. Berger Thomas G. Devine
Thomas K. Y. Hsu Brian D. Starer
ADVISORY COUNCIL
Gregory Amenoff
William Corbett Meg Cranston
Roy De Carava
Vernon Fisher Malik Gaines
Deborah Kass
Irving Sandler
GALLERY DIRECTOR
Jeremy Adams
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
Elaine Bowen
GALLERY COORDINATOR
Sandhini Poddar
GALLERY ASSISTANT
Al artwork $l Lee Baxter Davis Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ellis
Beatrice Wolert-Weese
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CUE ART FOUNDATION
511 WEST 25TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10001 WWW. CUEARTFOUNDATION .ORG
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