Today we’d like to introduce you to MCat Davis.
Hi MCat, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Born and raised in Dallas, I was really lucky to grow up in a family that was very connected and supportive of the Arts. My grandfather was an architect and grandma a ceramics artist. I had Aunts and Uncles that were painters, a mother who was a classically trained ballerina, and a family that frequented museums and performance halls. I took hours of dance and Art classes after school. I spent summers in my grandparents’ amazing studio and have fond memories of drawing and playing while they worked. The importance of the Arts and creativity were engrained in me really early on, which I recognize as a huge privilege now.
I ended up at The University of Mississippi and got my BFA in Painting and Drawing. This is where I learned how important it was for me to be able to share my work with others in an accessible way and developed a love for working with students. After graduating in 2018 and returning home to Dallas I began working part-time in a counseling center as an Art Therapy Liaison while keeping up with a string of odd jobs and my own artistic practice on the side. I craved some stability and consistency, which lead me into a job in ministry. I worked with middle school students for three years and through the pandemic. I loved this job, but it also made me realize I really wanted to devote more of my time to making and sharing art. That has brought me to the master’s program at The University of North Texas where I am currently a second-year graduate student.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely NOT a smooth road. Anything in a creative field demands some level of vulnerability, which in turn can cause a lot of self-doubt. Am I making work worth sharing? Can I create full-time and financially survive? Am I wasting my time? How do I even begin to talk about my Art? Will people accept this part of me I’m sharing through my art? The list goes on.
My time in and between my undergraduate degree and applying to grad school was riddled with these questions. I think part of it was trying find a path for myself without an outside entity (like a school system) mandating my next steps; something I believe most twenty-somethings deal with. Another, maybe larger, part was getting to know myself and what I truly believed and wanted. Making Art professionally has a unique set of challenges that can make it really hard to fully commit to. Like I mentioned before, it can be really inconsistent, vulnerable, and tiring to work in a creative field. I had to realize how essential art-making was to my life and be mentally prepared to advocate for myself consistently and fight for the creative practice I wanted. The years of working through this were challenging, but essential to where I am now.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I would definitely call myself a painter first, but I really enjoy experimenting with a lot of different mediums and materials. I work really intuitively and let my memory observations inform my color palette and marks. My first inclination is generally to go for bright colors and abstracted forms that represent the things I remember about a certain experience or time. I try to constantly challenge my own ideas of what a “painting” can be, and this has led me into different mediums like sculpture, video work, fiber arts, etc.
Most of my work stems from this idea of things that are visually intangible (wind, gravity, light, etc.) and trying to abstractly interpret those experiences into a visual plane. This interest ultimately started after a particularly tough situation, where I realized the emotions, I felt couldn’t be completely summed up by a single word. As cliche as it may seem, I began to try to make marks and forms that I felt described them better. This led me to thinking in a broader sense about things people understand to be “real” but cannot actually see with their own eyes. No matter how sure we are of something, there is an unpredictability that attaches itself to things we cannot see. I want to mirror that in my own work.
We’d love to hear about what you think about risk-taking.
Others would probably not align me with “risk-taking”, but I do believe I take risks in my own way. In my making practice, I approach almost every piece without an outcome in mind. I explore different materials that I know very little about. I fail a lot. Like A LOT. I actually kind of pride myself on being able to let go of the idea of perfection and making “bad art.” However, when I do try these new things, and they are successful I often end up creating something I really connect with, and hopefully others do too.
I believe many things deserve thoughtful consideration, but there are also many great outcomes that can result from taking risks and letting go.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mcatdavisart.com/
- Instagram: mcat.davis
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mcat.davis.5/
Image Credits
Tate Hollingsworth
