艺术家专访｜Mel Davis - 出入艺术

“ I think making art is a way to assert one’s freedom over and over again. I am interested in artists who are not so much rebels and rule breakers but those who redefine the parameters of their reality. ”

对我来说，艺术创作是一种不断重申自身自由的方式。我所感兴趣的艺术家，并不是那种简单意义上的反叛者或规则破坏者，而是那些能够重新定义自身现实边界的人。

——— Mel Davis

关于艺术家 Mel Davis

Artist Mel Davis

梅尔 ·戴维斯 (Mel Davis) 是一位工作与生活于加利福尼亚州伯克利的艺术家。她成长于蒙特利尔，毕业于康考迪亚大学(美术学士),后移居旧金山艺术学院攻读艺术硕士 (MFA)。她的作品被众多私人与公共机构收藏，并获得加拿大艺术委员会、魁北克艺术与文学委员会、波洛克 ·克拉斯纳基金会等奖项支持。

梅尔 ·戴维斯的创作跨越抽象与具象的边界，她善于在画布上构建多层次的语言系统—从色域绘画到植被意象的引入，她将直觉、记忆与艺术史参照融入画面的空间结构中。她的作品以“内部/外部”为主题，通过重复、拼贴与手势笔触的叠加，营造出如视觉诗般的自然意象，同时探讨绘画本体中的空间、色彩与形式问题。

戴维斯的近期个展包括：迈阿密Emerson Dorsch画廊(2024)、休斯顿Barbara Davis画廊(2023)等。她的作品亦曾参展于伦敦斯莱德美术学院、旧金山艺术研究院、洛杉矶Honor Fraser画廊等重要机构。

Mel Davis is an artist based in Berkeley, California, where she lives and works. She grew up in Montreal and earned her BFA from Concordia University before moving to San Francisco to complete her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her works are held in numerous private and public collections, and she has been supported by grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, among others.

Mel Davis's practice traverses the boundary between abstraction and figuration. She excels at building multilayered linguistic systems on canvas—from color-field painting to the introduction of botanical motifs—integrating intuition, memory, and art historical references into the spatial structure of the image. Her work often explores themes of "interior/exterior," using repetition, collage, and gestural brushwork to create natural imagery akin to visual poetry, while interrogating issues of space, color, and form within painting itself.

Davis's recent solo exhibitions include shows at Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami(2024), and Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston(2023). Her work has also been featured in exhibitions at institutions such as the Slade School of Fine Art in London, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles.

在「柔软的共生——2026 中外当代女性艺术家邀请展」期间，出入艺术有幸与艺术家 Mel Davis 展开了一次的交流。访谈从她的创作经历出发，延伸至绘画语言的形成、观念的演变以及长期实践中的思考与判断，呈现出她对绘画持续而深入的探索。同时，特别感谢狮语画廊对本次访谈及相关项目给予的支持与协助。

During Soft Coexistence — 2026 International Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Female Artists, IN&OUT Gallery had the pleasure of engaging in a conversation with artist Mel Davis. The discussion began with her artistic background and extended to the development of her painterly language, the evolution of her ideas, and the reflections and judgments formed through long-term practice, revealing her sustained and in-depth exploration of painting.

We would also like to express our sincere thanks to Leo Art Gallery for their support and assistance with this interview and related projects.

Q1出入艺术:你是如何成为?名艺术家？通过你的艺术创作，你想传递什么样的观念？

How did you become an artist, and through your artistic practice, what kinds of ideas are you hoping to communicate?

Mel Davis（以下简称M）：我在高中时开始将自己视为一名艺术家。在同龄人中，我逐渐被认为是一个有创造力的人。正是这种被“赋予”的身份，让我能够更认真地培养自己的艺术感知力。而一位支持我的美术老师，也让我在实践中变得更加坚定。但我常常认为，艺术家往往诞生于这样一种处境：在成长过程中，年轻人没有被给予足够的表达和玩耍的空间，而是被要求去顺从和适应。对我来说，艺术创作是一种不断重申自身自由的方式。我所感兴趣的艺术家，并不是那种简单意义上的反叛者或规则破坏者，而是那些能够重新定义自身现实边界的人。

在我的实践中，我持续探索对立关系之间的张力，以及存在于其中的细微地带。我主要关注的是美与其对立面——不和谐之间的对话；运动与绝对静止之间不同的速度；以及记忆如何演变、转化，并在当下的心智中以何种方式显现。

I started to identify as an artist in high school. I became known amongst my peers as a creative person. This identity that was gifted to me allowed me to cultivate my artistic sensibilities more seriously. And the role of a supportive art teacher helped me become more resolute about my practice. But I think often artists are made when, as young people, they are not given enough opportunity to speak and play and are made to conform. I think making art is a way to assert one’s freedom over and over again. I am interested in artists who are not so much rebels and rule breakers but those who redefine the parameters of their reality.

Through my practice, I explore the tension of opposition and the nuanced points in between. I am primarily focused on the dialogue between beauty and its counterpart, discordance, the different speeds between motion and absolute stillness and the evolution of memories and how they shift and manifest in the mind today.

??出入艺术

《风景 Landscape》2024

76.2x86.4cm

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

Q2出入艺术：拼贴在你的创作中占有重要位置。这种复杂性是否与你对当下信息环境的体验有关？

Collage plays an important role in your work. Is this complexity related to how you experience today’s information environment?

M：我经常使用 Photoshop 等数字工具在绘画的初始阶段进行构图，我将这些软件视为一种数字速写本。“拼贴”这种视觉美学，其实内嵌在这些工具之中，它们本身就建立在剪切、叠加和旋转等操作机制之上。

我觉得拼贴最吸引我的地方，在于它让“思考的过程”变得可见。在我的作品中，拼贴的主要作用是推动、支撑并最终呈现一个思想如何逐渐演变的过程。

我认为，当下的绘画中存在着一种不协和感——不同绘画语言和笔法在同一画面中发生碰撞。这种不协和，确实反映了我们今天思考和接收信息的方式，也可能是一种对过去追求“真、善、美”的艺术理想的回应。但绘画同时也能够创造出一个完全不同的空间，一个与“被完全解决的观念”相对立、并打断我们既有认知的空间。

今天的绘画可以是笨拙的、别扭的，甚至强调陌生和异质的感受。对我来说，绘画是一个让我不断进入未知领域、测试自身可能性的空间。

I often utilize digital tools, such as Photoshop, to compose my paintings at foundational level; I view the software much like a digital sketchbook. The 'collage' aesthetic is a visual language inherent to these tools—defined by the mechanics of cutting, layering, and rotating elements. What I find most compelling about the use of collage is how it makes the act of thinking visible. Its primary purpose in my work is to develop, support, and ultimately manifest the evolution of a thought.

I think painting for me today contains a kind of dissonance, where a collision of painterly mannerisms can happen in an image. This dissonance is a reflection of how we may be thinking and taking in information today for sure. And maybe it’s how artists are reacting to earlier quests for Truth, Beauty and Virtue. But painting can create another space entirely. One that is at odds with fully resolved ideas and disrupts what we think we know. Paintings today can be clumsy and awkward, highlighting the strange and alien. For myself, painting is a space where I seek to push further into a realm of an unknown and see what I am capable of.

??出入艺术

《花束 2 Bouquet 2》2024

86.4x76.2cm

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

Q3出入艺术：在使用拼贴和碎片化绘画结构时，你如何判断一幅作品是否完成？这种判断主要来自直觉吗？

When working with collage and fragmented painterly structures, how do you determine when a painting is finished? Is this decision primarily intuitive, or does it follow an internal logic you’ve developed over time?

M：判断一幅画是否完成，对我来说很大程度上是直觉性的。但我也无法自信地说，我的任何一件作品是真正“完成”的。我非常认同那些始终希望不断修正、完善自己作品的艺术家。

有时，我会在认为作品已经完成后，隔很长一段时间再回头看它们，并重新进入这些已有的画作，寻找一种过去未曾意识到的新逻辑。随着我的世界观不断变化，它始终在变化，绘画本身也会随之改变。

观看绘画也是如此。你是否有过这样的经验：一幅在你年轻时无法理解的作品，在某个时刻突然向你敞开，你开始在更深的层面上理解它？因为你从来不是同一个人，随着经验、知识和审美的积累，曾经显得晦涩的作品，可能会变成一次极为深刻的视觉体验。

布莱斯·马登曾说过：“一幅画在开始呼吸时，才算完成。”这是一个非常美丽而诗意的说法。对我而言，当我看到观念与绘画语言在画面中真正交汇、彼此服务，并形成统一时，我就会停下来。这种时刻总是令人惊讶的！某种意义上，艺术正是在这一刻发生的。

Determining the completion of a painting is very much intuitive. But I cannot say with confidence that any of my paintings are definitively finished. I relate very much to artists who wish to perpetually correct and better their work. It has happened that taking long breaks from “finished paintings” results in a reexamination of the works and I go back into pre-existing paintings to find a new logic, one that didn’t occur in the past. As my worldview changes, and it is always changing, the painting can change.

This also goes for viewing paintings. Has it ever happened to you that a painting that was closed to your younger self, is finally appreciated? It opens up and you can see it on a deeper level. Since you are never the same person; as you accumulate experience, knowledge and taste, it may be that what was once opaque to you can become a profound visual experience.

Brice Marden famously said, “a painting is finished when it starts to breathe”. This is a beautiful and poetic idea. I think I stop working on paintings when I can see the co-mingling of idea and painterly application take place; they become unified, one in service of the other. This always feels surprising! This is basically when art happens.

《花束 Bouquet》2024

76.2x68.6cm

布面油画 Oil on canvas

Q4出入艺术：你是否将绘画视为一个可以让不同历史时刻同时共存的空间？艺术史是否会在某些时候变得“过于喧哗”？

Do you see painting as a space in which different historical moments can coexist simultaneously? And is there ever a moment when art history becomes too “loud” in the painting?

M：当然。所有绘画本质上都是一种跨越历史的对话，因为每一幅画都不可避免地受到其他绘画记忆的影响。

至于第二个问题，这更多关乎品味。作为观者，我有时会感觉某些艺术家过度依赖艺术史语言，或过于向他们的艺术英雄致敬，这反而可能削弱创作本身。我们很容易迷失在他人的伟大之中，在工作室里感受到历史的重负。

但同样重要的是，要始终意识到：我们自己的艺术实践，正是一个表达个人关切与经验的平台。正是在这样的基础上，绘画才能继续向前发展。

Definitely! All painting is essentially a transhistorical dialogue, in the sense that every painting is informed by the memory of other paintings. Your second question is a matter of taste. I think sometimes, as a viewer, I feel artists can lean too closely on art historical devices or pay homage to their art heroes, which can have a debilitating effect on an art practice. We can quite easily get lost in the greatness of others, and feel the burden of history in our studios, but it’s so important to feel that the art we make is the platform where we get to express our own individual concerns. This is how Painting moves forward.

Q5出入艺术：你是否觉得近期的创作进入了一个新的阶段？有没有新的变化或突破？

Do you feel that your recent work has entered a new stage? Have there been any new changes or breakthroughs?

M：我觉得自己在工作室里一直都在学习新的东西，无论是关于尺度、色彩，还是节奏与时间管理等实践层面的问题。最近，我特别关注的一点是：尽量不在创作当下对作品进行价值判断。我发现这种判断并不总是有益的。

现在，我更愿意把我的实践看作一个滋养好奇心的空间。每一个创作行为，都是我提出问题、寻找解决方式的过程。这个过程本身并不能简单地被划分为“好”或“坏”，因为它正是我思考方式的一部分，也是我如何创作绘画的方式。

如果我们能够将自己创作的绘画视为一段漫长而开放的探索：关于当下如何生活、如何理解世界，那么我们或许能以一种更深刻、更慷慨的方式，去理解自己的作品，以及他人的作品。

I think I learn new things all the time in my studio. Practical things that have to do with scale and colour, pacing and time management. Recently I’ve been focused on not being judgmental about my work, (especially in the present moment, as I am making it) which I have found to be not helpful. I’ve now grown to see my practice as a place where curiosity is nurtured. With every action, I express my desire to ask questions and to find solutions. This creative act cannot be deemed “good or bad” as it’s a part of my mind and how it works to create paintings. If we can see the paintings that we make as part of a long and expansive exploration of what it means to live in our worlds today, then we can have a deeper, more generous understanding of our work and the work of others.