ART

In The Modbo, look for new works by Denver artist Davoth, while you can find the latest pieces by local favorite and Modbo Collective artist Phil Lear over at S.P.Q.R.

The opening reception will feature music by both beloved local band Dear Rabbit and the Denver-based free jazz ensemble, The Bottesini Project, comprised of Paul Riola on saxophones, Danny Meyer on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Glen Whitehead on trumpet, Kim Stone on bass, and Jay Ellis on drums.

Phil Lear graduated from Pensacola Christian College’s Commercial Art program in 1997, where he studied for four years under established illustrators and designers. It was during this time that he began to realize a passion for painting and for expressing the beauty he saw all around. Personal study and a deep love for the art of the Renaissance and late-Victorian eras increased both his knowledge of painterly innovation and his fast-growing desire to become an artist himself.

After illustrating for missionaries in Switzerland in 1999, Phil returned to the United States and began taking steps towards entering the professional world of painters. He became a charter member of the Portrait Society of America, and has displayed work in several public exhibitions and competitions. Phil now furthers his study and artistic journey in the company of a group of young artists known as The Modbo Collective, at The Modbo and S.P.Q.R. Galleries in Colorado Springs, CO. He also shows at Mountain Living Studios in Manitou Springs, CO. In 2010, the Colorado Springs Gazette awarded him the Gold Medal for Best Art Exhibition of the year.

Phil Lear has always strived to bring an emotional charge to his work, a charge that he intends to have resonate with the viewer long after the initial viewing. Murky grays, browns, and strokes of sky blue pile on the canvas to form a barrage of color that both intrigues and gratifies the eye in a fresh painterly realism. As a story-teller, his canvases are peopled, with a disparate, ragtag band of characters whose entrance on the scene can be at once inspiring and disquieting—wild-eyed youth, brooding poets, defiant downtrodden martyrs, spellbinding vixens, and fallen angels, tragic heroes and the criminally bent. They are strangers, but with a deep connection to the distant song of reality and life. “As a narrative figurative painter, I feel a mission to create work that embodies the classical ideal, and speaks to the universal and timeless aspects of the human experience.”

Davoth was born in Chicago, grew up in Kansas, and escaped to Colorado Springs in 1996. He began making sculpture and eventually paintings as both a positive and negative response to a trip to Santa Fe, NM. Davoth has kept his creative and aesthetic education to the very individual and minimal so as to both control direction and also to limit influence from various schools of art theory and conserve originality. He now resides in Denver, CO.

Davoth finds the world to be a chaotic, yet incredibly beautiful place. In shunning his more natural sense for clarity and order and making the effort to notice his surroundings at each second, Davoth is able to stay open to the new and the fresh; it is then that he is most in awe of the world. His work comes from a place of simple idea, over which many changes occur organically. The artist prides himself on avoiding academic aesthetic choices, instead trusting his instincts to produce meaningful artistic compositions.