BIOGRAPHY

Tess Davies (formerly Erlenborn) is an artist from Nashville, TN. She graduated cum laude from Sewanee: The University of the South with a B.F.A under the honors program in 2014. Her studio practices include acrylic and oil painting, with a focus on natural textures, layered spaces and dualities. She takes inspiration from escapism and biological patterns and forms. 

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is inspired by shared human reactionary tendencies. The act of painting repeated patterns correlates to our specific way in which we handle and respond to inevitable traumatic or emotional occurrences in life. I paint scattered, layered fragments of biologically inspired patterns, textures, and my surroundings.

My work reveals the way in which we compartmentalize and apply order and structure to our days, despite life’s inevitabilities. Drawing on patterns found in diseases, cell growth, and natural phenomena, I then apply playful, often considered feminine colors and creates compositions that mask and make light of these darker components, similar to the way we suppress and mask our true feelings and fears.

Oftentimes, I expand the compositions off the confinements of the canvases to represent the way in which our emotions, or personal baggage, has a way of revealing itself in unexpected, often unwanted, ways and breaks out despite our attempts to contain them. The purpose of my work is to address the problems surrounding the societally acceptable way to cope.

ARTIST CV