Davyd Whaley - Art and Psychology

"Davyd Whaley was born on December 6, 1967 and died on October 15, 2014. He was a resident artist at the Santa Fe Art Colony in downtown Los Angeles and was a member of the Los Angeles Art Association. His time was split between being a full-time studio artist and teaching art classes. At the time of his death he was teaching art to terminally ill children with The Art of Elysium, as well as working with war-scarred children through The Children of War Foundation.

As an artist, Davyd Whaley was primarily self-taught. But he took occasional classes at UCLA and with Ronnie Landfield and Larry Poons at the Art Students League of New York. The genesis of his art came from both nature and his surroundings but also from his dreams and subconscious. He was inspired by Jungian psychology and his own desire to understand the unconscious mind through the study of dreams, symbols, art, and philosophy. Davyd believed, "Painting manifests an alternate universe in which our subconscious world becomes a reality.”

In technical terms, Davyd was drawn to asymmetrical forms and the energy and power created by a 3-dimensional contrast of tactile depth, light and color. Davyd’s paintings are defined by circuitous strokes, thick with color and texture. He painted in episodes, each work expressing a moment; each canvas a spiritual sequence, like dreams linked in our subconscious by ethereal themes or meanings.

He wrote, "We do not get all the information on how to live our everyday lives in just one dream. They come in short, little bursts, like thunderstorms. Just like storms, dreams have patterns if we piece them together. I paint as a way of expressing my feelings.”

In the long history of art, there is an abundance of artists whose work was barely known until long after their passing, and indeed Davyd Whaley’s art had not achieved wide recognition at the time of his death. As a body of work, however, it proclaims its own quality and celebrates the dedication and passion with which it was created. He remains alive in the hundreds of paintings and drawings he completed." (davydwhaley.com)