Paul Brooks Davis

Paul Brooks Davis (a.k.a. "Paul Davis", born 1938 in Centrahoma, Oklahoma) is an American graphic artist.

Paul Brooks Davis, better known as Paul Davis, was born in 1938 in Centrahoma, Oklahoma. The middle of three children born to Howard Davis, a Methodist minister, and Susan Brookhart Davis, he spent his childhood in small towns: Caddo, Jenks, Hartshorne and Antlers, in Oklahoma, as well as Sulphur Springs, Arkansas; Ellis, Kansas; and, briefly, Great Falls, Montana. He attended Woodrow Wilson Junior High School (Tulsa, Oklahoma), and later, Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, where his talent was nurtured by art teacher Hortense Bateholts. While in high school, Davis, with friends Russell Myers and Archie Goodwin formed a cartoonist's club which met daily at the Owl Drugstore at 11th Street and Pittsburg in Tulsa. Davis won a scholarship to the School of Visual Arts and moved to New York at age 17. There he studied with outstanding illustrators Philip Hays and Robert Weaver, and graphic designer and artist George Tscherny.

While still a student, he produced his first commissioned illustration, a pencil drawing which appeared in the October 1959 issue of Playboy Magazine. After finishing his courses at School of Visual Arts, he was hired by Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast, partners in the groundbreaking Push Pin Studios. A series of his target paintings was the subject of issue 32 (1961) of the studio’s publication, The Push Pin Graphic. He then illustrated “A Bestiary” of famous people, conceived and written by artist Edward Sorel which appeared in the July 1962 issue of Horizon Magazine.

Davis’s work quickly caught the imagination of art directors in the U.S. and abroad, and he was soon in demand as an illustrator for magazines, record album covers, book jackets, and advertising. He formed the Paul Davis Studio in 1963, working first in New York and later in Sag Harbor on Long Island. His style had a tremendous impact on the field of illustration. His illustrations have appeared in Life, Time, Playboy, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, Evergreen Review, Harper's, Harper's Bazaar, Horizon, McCall's, Show, Esquire, The New Republic, New York, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Mirabella, Fast Company, Worth, Money and many other publications.

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