Colin Davidson (born 1968) is a Northern Irish visual artist, living and working near Belfast, Northern Ireland. An artist who works in themes, his recent large-scale head paintings have been exhibited worldwide.
Education
Davidson was born in Belfast in 1968 and attended Methodist College Belfast between 1980 and 1987.[1] He graduated from the University of Ulster in 1991 with a first class honours degree in design.[2] He worked in the field of design for print until 1999 when he started to paint full-time. Davidson is an academician of the Royal Ulster Academy and served as president of the Royal Ulster Academy between 2012 and 2015.[3]
Early work
Davidson started to paint Belfast in his teens, and this theme came to the fore in 2004 when his exhibition No Continuing City was mounted at the Tom Caldwell Gallery.[4] The exhibition included large paintings of Belfast as seen from high view-points. The urban theme continued between 2006 and 2010 when Davidson made paintings based on the illusionary world seen in city window reflections.[5]
In 2016, Davidson was commissioned to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for Co-operation Ireland. This painting was unveiled at Crosby Hall in London by the Queen in November 2016.[11] In the same year, he portrayed Jamie Dornan which he unveiled in his studio that year.[12]
In 2017, the National Portrait Gallery unveiled Davidson's portrait of Ed Sheeran, a painting which has been acquired for its collection.[13][14]
In 2019, Bill Clinton unveiled an official portrait painted by Davidson. The painting now hangs in the Clinton Foundation, Little Rock, Arkansas.[15]
Jerusalem
In 2014, and continuing the theme of large scale portraits, Davidson turned his attention to the city of Jerusalem. He made paintings of twelve individuals who lived or worked in the city. They came from different backgrounds, cultures and traditions. Among these dozen Jerusalemites were Jews, Muslims, Christians, a politician, a monk, a doctor, a peace activist, a hotel worker and a Holocaust survivor.[16] In 2017, the exhibition went on tour to London and New York, where it was shown at 92nd Street Y.
Silent Testimony
Davidson's 2015 exhibition of portrait paintings entitled 'Silent Testimony' tells the stories of eighteen people who are connected by their individual experiences of loss through Northern Ireland's 30 years of violence known as the Troubles. This exhibition was on show at the Ulster Museum Belfast during 2015, before embarking on a tour which included the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and Dublin Castle. The Exhibition was on display in Derry at the Nerve Visual Gallery in Ebrington Square in 2018 and at The National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire in 2019. In 2018, the Irish and British Missions to The United Nations invited Davidson to show the exhibition and speak at the UN Headquarters in New York.[17][18]
