By Anna Grace Moore
Photos by Lisa Cheek & Contributed
A native of Cape Town, South Africa, Heather Davis says she owes much of her artistic authenticity to the Motherland. Her family immigrated to South Africa from Scotland after her grandfather, one of the first violinists in the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, visited the town on a world tour.
He fell in love with the city and later moved his entire family to Cape Town, soon saturating Heather’s childhood with creativity. Growing up in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, Heather says she garnered a healthy appreciation for life’s blessings.
She grew up dancing, playing piano–anything her parents thought would help her cherish the beauty in art. Her father, a prolific painter, would often take her on expeditions to the game reserve near their home, so he could photograph animals in their natural habitats.
Heather never will forget her father waiting till the last minute to move out of a ginormous male elephant’s path–just so he could take the “perfect shot.”
“There is nothing like an African sunset,” Heather says, smiling. “It’s a very beautiful thing. There’s colors that are very extreme, so I guess that comes out in my artwork.”
The smell of turpentine, oil paints–those create such a sense of nostalgia for her, especially as she recalls watching her father capture light on his canvases. He could always paint such raw emotion into his landscapes, often without saying a word at all.
Heather lived in South Africa for the first 17 years of her life before moving to England when she was a senior in high school. There, she worked on Seville Row in London–a street known for its bespoke ateliers.
Her fascination for the femininity in fabric–and its projection of inward feelings–held her attention captive. Yet, she did not stay in England for long as home came calling, and she moved back to South Africa to attend a technical school where she met her first husband.
In 1992, she welcomed her first-born, Caleb, into the world before making the cross-cultural trek to the United States with her family in ‘93. Not long after did Heather decide to go back to school and study fashion illustration and design at Purdue University.
Then a single mother of three, Heather says juggling school, work and motherhood was quite difficult, but she took a page out of her father’s book and tried to find the beauty in what seemed to be a much more mundane lifestyle. Just as her hope started to dwindle, she met her now husband, Jonathan Davis, at a church service in West Lafayette, Indiana.
As fate would have it, Heather actually met Jonathan’s father nearly 20 years prior as he visited Cape Town on a mission trip with his church. The Davises tied the knot and moved to Homewood in 2002.
Fast forward to 2020, and like so many others, Heather found herself as an empty nester with time on her hands for the first time in a long time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was here for a year, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t want to go work for someone again for 60-plus hours, you know, I want to do my own thing,’” she says. “I just wanted to do art. I mean, that’s always been my passion.”
Having grown up in an artistic family, Heather says it surprises many that she never jumpstarted her career as a painter until the pandemic.
“My first piece, I remember putting paint on the canvas, moving it around, letting it dry,” she says, later adding, “watching something appear from behind those colors.”
Heather starts each painting by selecting hues from the color wheel, shading in the darkest tones first, letting them dry and tinting the piece with lighter colors as her work progresses. Sometimes, she’ll see shapes revealed in her work, allowing her to draw into fruition what her heart wants to convey.
Heather has since expanded her repertoire to include painting on canvas bags and pillows. Although it takes her two-to-three weeks to complete a painting, Heather has created more than 200 paintings since she started investing in her passions in 2020.
Each piece is unique, usually adorned with various textures of homemade paper, cracking or hardening paste, heavy gel and perhaps, a touch of gold.
“A lot of my art is colorful, so it’s going to brighten up any room,” she says. “A lot of my faces don’t actually have features, not all of them. It leaves it up to interpretation.”
Inspired by world-renowned artists Claude Monet and Gustav Klimt, Heather says some of the most awe-inspiring paintings are more abstract and enable the beholder to project his own emotions onto the work, allowing him to humanize the subject. Artwork depicting more realistically portrayed people, ironically, does not always bridge a connection between the artist and the viewer since there is less to interpret, to ponder, to understand.
One of her most profound paintings is called, “Can You Hear Me?” This abstract piece mimics a spring, batik-like landscape, layering hues of chartreuse, cerulean and rust in melancholic cells reeling in from the outward corners.
Just as the dark wages in from the Northwest and Southeast corners, the light in the middle fights for visibility, pushing back against the noise of the void. Heather welcomes each person to form his own interpretation of her work because there is beauty to be found in everything–even the things we at first do not understand.
“My art really reflects my experiences in life–where I’ve lived, places I’ve been, places I want to go,” she says. “Sometimes, it’s even reflected in my fears, my inside fears, and my passion.”
Reflecting on her artistry, Heather says some of the hardest times in her life yielded the most beautiful blessings.
“My art often serves as a mirror to my inner world–my emotions–or even a longing to be somewhere because I have a great longing to go back to Africa,” she says. “That’s my home.”
A cornucopia of culture, Africa, Heather says, is not just an aesthetically alluring place, but it is also a place rich in gratitude for family–life’s most beautiful blessing. She hopes her artwork inspires that same transcendent love that builds the foundation for all things beautiful.
To view or purchase Heather Davis’ art online, visit heatherkathleen.art. Her artwork is also sold in person at Alabama Goods in Homewood, Hoover and Huntsville.
