Labels Series
This series of sixty paintings was completed from May to November of 2010. The works range in size from 12.8 x 17cm to 102 x 127cm. Most are by definition small as they incorporate collaged labels and logos, used as starting points for mixed media compositions.

These works capture the excitement and banality of our purchases, from the designer label to the everyday supermarket necessity. Corporate identities permeate our existence in subliminal ways, and to a large extent we are known for what we buy. At best, we are making choices, at worst, slaves to consumerism. When the clothes are worn, the meal eaten or the show seen; these cards tags and tickets are usually discarded, not given a second glance.

My aim in this series was always to redefine and reinvent. To treat these scraps of memorabilia with wit, irony, love and irreverence in equal measure. I have tried to give these labels a new life through the marriage of texture, colour and the imagination. The process made me doubly sure of what can be done with captured moments from the past, that the revered and the inconsequential can become one and the same; not trapped in a bubble of time and memory but given a new and unexpected life, and hopefully none the worse for it.

F G Davis 2010