Artist Talk With Paul Davis

On Saturday, November 9, at 6 p.m., The Church holds an “Artist Talk” with Paul Davis, one of the six artists featured in the fall exhibition, “Yes, No, WOW: The Push Pin Studios Revolution.”

Paul Davis moved from Oklahoma to New York at age 17, to attend the School of Visual Arts on scholarship. He came with the ambition, inspiration and vision to create exciting graphic art and he joined the influential Push Pin Studios of Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast before starting his own career in the early 1960s.

Considered a master, the award-winning, internationally renowned artist will speak about his time with Push Pin Studios, share his longstanding Sag Harbor history and the inspiration he found there, and discuss topics like his early influences and a career that has taken him all over the world. Following the program, there will be a Q&A with the audience.

Davis found himself in high demand early on in his career, creating illustrations for magazines, record album covers, book jackets, ads, and even restaurant walls. From his iconic Che Guevara image to an extensive collection of theater posters and more, Davis’s work has become the subject of numerous gallery exhibitions and museum retrospectives worldwide.

His early paintings were on wood, in a distinctive style that emerged from his Southwestern roots, a love of Early American painting and Surrealism. Davis’s idyllic landscapes, insightful portraits, and powerful political images caught the attention of magazine art directors and quickly became a familiar part of America’s visual landscape, influencing a generation of illustrators.

Davis experiments in a variety of media and styles, preferring content and inclination to guide him. The first retrospective of his work opened at The Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura, Japan in 1975, and was presented at the inaugural opening of the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1977 in Paris. His paintings and posters have been the subject of books and of gallery and museum exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and Asia, 16 of his portraits are in the collection of the National Gallery.

Davis created the familiar identity logo and painting for The Hampton Classic at its inception. His long collaboration with Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival and Public Theater began in 1975. He also was founding art director for two magazines, Wigwag and Normal, and for the opening exhibition of the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens in 1986.

He taught and lectured widely. Honors include induction into the Halls of Fame of the Art Directors Club and the Society of Illustrators; and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Guild Hall in East Hampton, a special Dramatists Guild award for his theatrical posters. He is a Fellow and Resident of the American Academy of Rome and a longtime member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale.

Author Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “Whenever I feel inexplicably happy and excited in New York, believing that I really am in the art capital of the world, the chances are that I have just passed a poster by Paul Davis. His work is the face of the city at its best …”

Davis lives and works in Sag Harbor. He began designing graphics and posters for Theatre for a New Audience in 2022.

Tickets for the talk are $15 ($10 members) at thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street in Sag Harbor.