Check Out Theo Davis Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Theo Davis.

Hi Theo, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
Well, I’ve always been wildly creative, but due to several negative experiences in the past, I didn’t share my art most of my life. Then, several years back, I started an Instagram art account to share my love and passion for the arts.

I didn’t do it to sell anything… but soon one of my friends, Sam Montiel, wanted to pay me to paint a pair of sneakers for him! It blew me away because it was the first time anyone saw value in my art on a monetary level. Man, I worked so hard on that one piece because I wanted to be perfect, and he loved it. It was an illustrated watercolor.

Fast forward to 2018, I just really wanted to double down on my art. I started by attending live figure drawing sessions in the West Bottoms of Kansas City to hone my skills in the human figure. From there I began exploring charcoal and acrylics. But it wasn’t until 2019 when I found my main passion: Palette Knife Oil Painting! The texture of oil paint was so thick that I instantly fell in love, haha. Soon my friends wanted to start buying my creations.

As my social media presence started to grow, people I’d never met across the country started requesting custom commissions. Today, I do a combination of Palette Knife Oil Paintings and Illustrations of people. So far, I’ve got art hanging in several states and two countries!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Ha, not at all! I’m a Jesus follower and art isn’t always appreciated or accepted in various Christian communities. Honestly, the biggest struggle to sharing my art has generally been other Christians. Early on I had so many negative experiences with Christians urging me to give up any art that I almost did. A few examples:

While at a church as a teenager, a church leader saw I was into drawing anime characters and sternly told me not to do that because “ALL” anime was demonic and had a bad “spirit” about it. Later, I started an art club at the same church and got permission to hang our portrait and landscape artwork on the lower level. A few weeks later one of the pastors threw out all the artwork without even asking me or the other artists if we wanted our works back.

Despite these experiences, I really wanted to dedicate my life to helping people find their way back to God and became a pastor on the East Coast. However, since being a pastor isn’t exactly a… lucrative endeavor, I tried to start a photography business on the side. During one of my public shoots with a female model in a shopping center my pastor boss saw me doing the shoot. He met with me a few days later and said I shouldn’t be doing that because I was married and it looked bad on the church. As you can imagine, those constant messages that my art was morally corrupt suppressed my desire to create and share throughout much of my life.

Today, I am the Digital Pastor at Restore Community Church here in Kansas City, Missouri and I love how this church community has fanned the flames of my various forms of art. Some of my first collectors were from our church! You have no idea how healing that is for a creative. In fact, one of our goals as a church is to identify and reproduce artists because we recognize that art is powerful and God is creative! If God is real (spoiler, I believe he is) He has a marvelous paintbrush!

One glance at our own bodies, sunsets, and galaxies can reveal that He is artistic. I want our church community to be a place where both religious and non-religious people can come and be inspired with musical and visual experiences that evokes a desire to ask more questions about this Jesus… both in-person and online. I want to use my faith to inspire my art… and allow my art to deepen others’ spiritual awareness.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a visual artist. Specifically, I use oil paints and pens.

I’m most known for my Palette Knife Oil Paintings. We are a rare breed. Palette Knives are what most artists use to simply mix the paint, then they use brushes to create. However, I love thick paint. Using palette knives instead of brushes forces you to be creative. I love slopping paint onto the canvas and molding it into something recognizable.

The most fun is when you are up close it doesn’t look very complicated. Simple smudges and globs of paint. But the magic comes when you step back and suddenly all the colors and globs of paint reveal a piece of art you are blind to up close. I’ve done several large skylines of Kansas City in this style for living rooms and office spaces.

When it comes to pen, I tend to draw people in an illustrated style. Clients will request that I render a real photograph from Instagram or their phone into a one-of-a-kind special image in my line drawing style. I enjoy doing figure drawings either for fun or commissioned by someone. Love helping people feel beautiful when they see themselves rendered through an artist’s eyes. I love rendering body positivity images of the bare human form. Rolls, wrinkles, and all – as well as portraits and other special moments.

As far as what am I most proud of? My goodness… I can’t choose. There are two clients in the Kansas City Northland who have some of my paintings hanging in their homes. One is a 3×7 foot palette knife painting of the Kansas City Skyline, the other home requested a series of paintings of some iconic locations around the city.

I’m really proud of these paintings because I feel like they are some of the fullest expressions of my love of palette knife painting. They are all so rich in texture and color. The clients gave me free rein to simply create something from these locations and I had a lot of fun with it!

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was a black kid in an all-white community.

Often found myself too black for the white kids and not black enough when I encountered the black kids. I was a deep introvert who preferred to be alone but would always leech off the energy and adventurous spirit of raging extroverts like my friend Dan Cogswell. You know, pretend like you don’t want to do something but deep inside your hoping your friend makes you do the thing, haha. I also developed a deep appreciation of folk and classical music and movie scores.

I loved James Horner’s stuff. He composed the scores of Titanic, Braveheart, the Alien films. Japanese composer, Nobuo Uematsu, composed almost all the music for the Final Fantasy video games. Some of the greatest video game music of all time in my opinion! My wife and I actually have tickets to go see an orchestra in Omaha Nebraska perform the Final Fantasy VII Remake score life! Ah! Geeking out!

But yes, I was also a gamer growing up. Because video games are an art form too! In fact, I was so passionate about gaming I’ve named our kids after video game characters. My Daughter is named Zelda, after Princess Zelda. My Son is named Shepherd, after Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect Series (we went with a different spelling).

And my second, son who will be born in May of 2022, will also be named after a video game character. But that’s a secret until he gets here. And yes, my wife is amazingly cool! She helps encourage me to do whatever I set my mind to. A beautiful Pacific Islander who is also an artist! A sculptor and graphic designer.

Pricing:

• Palette Knife paintings range between $80 and $2000
• Black and White Pen sketches of people are currently $65 on a 6×10” greyscale sheet.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.thedavisarts.art
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedavisarts
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDavisArts
• Other: (Personal) https://www.facebook.com/TheDavises (Personal) https://www.instagram.com/theo_davis

Image Credits
Judiann McMahon