Karin Davie

Karin Davie (born July 27, 1965, Toronto, Canada) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in New York City and Seattle, Washington.

Davie is best known for her idiosyncratic twist on the modernist 'stripe' and looping hyperbolic abstractions. Her contemporary practice has been viewed in context with ideas of painting-as-performance from 1950s Abstract Expressionism and the optical endeavors of 1960s Op Art, yet Davie's art departs from these strict formalist and largely masculine painting traditions, rejecting the notion of a pure abstraction for a more referential and representational approach. Her work extends the legacy of high modernism to capture the dynamics of contemporary life.

Her early work Hey Sexy # 1 & #2, and Wow #1 & #2 (diptychs) 1992–1993 from the Sidewalk series of paintings use the modernist 'stripe' motif to create "Op" images suggestive of the female body covered up in striped fabric. The titles are taken from catcalls directed at women on the street. In another series from this period, Odalisque, the trapezoidal shaped canvases with undulating painted stripes, evoke the eroticism of the reclining nude. These paintings are considered part of the 1990s and Postmodernism dialog, with a renewed interest in the psychedelic, pop culture, and the concepts of 'identity' and 'body' in painting.

New York critic Bob Nickas writes, "In 1992 a tall diptych hanging in the office of Feature gallery in New York made an immediate impression – with horizontally undulating bands of lurid color pinched in the center on a downward curve, it seemed cartoonishly grotesque. A first take: running mascara, and so a body reference; at the same time the painted canvas/painted face seemed to send up the act of painting."

The paintings Hysteric and Interior Ghosts offer other earlier examples (1998–2003) of Davie's interest in the concept of painting processes and the body. This work exploits the inherent physical limitations presented in painting and blurs the boundary between representation and abstraction. In Davie's work, the erotic potential of an abstract image is underscored by the sensuality and physicality of the image. Other series include, Pushed, Pulled, Depleted & Duplicated, Between My Eye and Heart, Chinatownblues, Symptomania, Seeing Spots and more recently Shadow Days (2010–2012) and Liquid Life (2012–2013).

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