Thomas Nathaniel Davies was born in Dowlais,  South Wales in 1922. Shunning a promising early career with Cardiff City football club, he enrolled at Cardiff College of Art in 1939, where he was taught and befriended by the painter Ceri Richards.

His studies were interrupted by the War and he was called up for service with The Royal Corps of Signals in North Africa. On his return he taught for a brief period at the Royal College of Art where the sculptor John Skeaping, a professor there, became a close friend. In 1947 he accepted a job at Newton Abbot Art School, before later becoming the Head of Art at South Devon College School in Torquay.

During this post-War period he produced paintings that reflected both his childhood in the grey steel town of Dowlais and the green landscape of his new life in Devon. It also marked an intense time of portrait painting, with influences ranging from Post-Impressionism to Picasso. His self-portraits from this period also form a small but masterly body of his work, in which the artist is searching out his real identity as an individual and as a painter in the aftermath of the War.

The 1950s saw a new confidence in Nathaniel Davies's work with the artist's style moving away from representational views; during the 1960s, he took an even bolder step towards abstraction. The boats in the harbour became fragmented, for example, and his portraits were pared down into simple geometric forms. In the early 1970s he produced large, clean, sparse paintings eschewing figuration entirely but, as always in his work, powerful definition of line was preeminent. Indeed at this time he produced a series of spot paintings and sculptures - some twenty years before Damien Hirst would think of his designs. This led him to begin to work more out of coloured perspex and wood. Nathaniel Davies retired as Head of South Devon College's school of Art in 1984. With less inclination to produce big paintings, he concentrated on woodcuts in his Newton Abbot studio. The artist died in 1996.

The Artist in his own words:

Then why do I write on Visual Art when I could be so easily reproached with - Don’t Talk Painter, Paint? Because I  feel that the apparent gap that lies between artist and layman can be bridged.

In this world of immense variety, the artist is looked upon as a person apart. But there must be common ground between layman and artist where a mutual approach is possible.

The only real justification for a painter to use works is to stimulate a new angle of approach.

To lay more stress on the content of a work, than upon its more formal and material ingredients. Therefore I will confine myself to the process by which a work of Art is conceived and appreciated. A painter is moved, moved by a visual experience, by a vivid sensation, by an emotional crisis, he is moved and his only desire is to paint. He has in his possession the means to move others in the direction in which he himself is driven. And how does he commence? What has he at his disposal to use to express himself?

We have words by which we express ourselves, most people have words only to express what they have to say. By what means, in what language does the artist say the important things which he has to paint?

If in his mind the artist has a vivid image, by what means does he transmit this image, if he is denied words.

On canvas or on paper he can draw lines, he can draw lines that enclose an area, in that area, he can leave it white, or he can make it black, or any grey between white and black, and this is called tone value. Or a shape which is enclosed by a line, he can change with colour. These then are all that he possesses - line tone value and colour.

With these he can conceive, a work.

Of course is must be realised that these possessions, line, tone value, and colour possess properties. A line, has distance, it has rhythm, tone value has weight, and colour has quality. You may say now, reader, but what of chairs, faces, violins and madonnas, or flowers and boats - these that I recognise in paintings. A painting has brought memories of past summer holidays, or Christmas spent in childhood days - and I recognise my own experience in a painted work.

A painted boat seems friendly enough, its shape is apparent, its situation clear, and it may stimulate by recognition only, a fishing adventure or a turn around the bay. Is not this then an imposition by ourselves upon a picture? Are we enjoying, not so much the painting, but a sentimental recollection, or glowing memory. The painting has served only as a point of departure for the excursion of memory.

Something is wrong. Either with the spectator or the picture. A work of Art is an entity,a  new experience, a new and rich encounter - it has to be, other wise it is no work of Art.

A work of Art lives in its own life from the moment it has been conceived, it lives its own life, and it an integral part o the world. It does not depend upon anything or anybody not even the artist who painted it, it simply lives its own life, giving off in the course of its life rare qualities of its own.

To a painter a boat or a person, are seen with the eyes a sensation becomes apparent, the vision becomes blurred, and the objects themselves dissolve into forms and colour, forms and colour that still posses the vibrance of a life o a boat or a person. The artist becomes the receptacle for emotions that come fro all sorts of places. From the sea, fro sky, from the corner of a public bar, from Newton Abbot from dreams. You must realise that to an artist - to paint is a necessity.

You are going to look at a painting. Take nothing with you - no memories, no intellectual preparation, no sentiment, no not even a canon of beauty. No preconceived idea will help, but go with nothing and maybe you will receive something.

Remember an artist works from necessity, just as to all men work is a necessity. A painting lives its own life, and changes daily, changes by what is imposed upon it by the person looking at it.

Most people want to understand Art. They say puzzled, “But why?”, “What is it?” and bewildered they reel from one to another, glancing at the catalogue for a clue. “Oh, please a clue, I must understand”, and because they never do - they condemn.

I quote Picasso - Everyone want to understand Art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them.

SELECTED LITERATURE:

Andrew Graham-Dixon, “Angry Young Men”, in Sunday Telegraph 20th Feb 2005

Philip Vann, Face to Face. British Self Portraits in the Twentieth Century, 2005, p. 143

Jack Beddington, Young Artists of Promise, London 1957

BIOGRAPHY:

1922 Born in Dowlais, South Wales. The youngest of five children: Glenys, Nancy, May and Tydfil

1934 Moved to Cardiff and attended Canton High School for Boys

1939 Started at Cardiff School of Art

1941 Passed his Drawing Examination

1942 February 21st received his call up papers

1942 March 5th Joined the Army

1942 Obtained leave to sit, and pass, his painting examination

1946 April 1st De-mob

1947 Returned to Cardiff College of Art to finish his Art Teachers Diploma

1948 Took up a lecturing post at Newton Abbot Art School

1949 His mother, Helena Davies Died

1949 Visiting Lecturer at The Royal College of Art – encouraged by his friend John Skeaping

1958 Married Heather Wilkins. Moved to ‘Belmont’ in Newton Abbot where he lived and worked for the rest             of his life

1960 Daughter Ceri Born

1963 Son Nick Born

1965 Son Marcus Born

1966 His Father David John Davies Died

1967 Daughter Naomi Born

1971 Newton Abbot Art School merged with South Devon Technical College in Torquay

1979 Became Head of The Art School in Torquay

1984 Retired from Teaching

1996 Died

EXHIBITIONS:

1947 St George’s Gallery London, Welsh Painting Last Sixty Years (group)

1948 James Howell Cardiff, Welsh Vision (group)

1955 National Museum of Wales, Contemporary Welsh Painting and Sculpture (group)

1956 Whitechapel Art Gallery London, Pictures for Schools (group)

1956 National Museum of Wales, Contemporary Welsh Painting and Sculpture (group)

1956 Royal West of England Academy, 104th Annual Exhibition (group)

1956 The Chenil Gallery London, Industrial Britain (group)

1957 Royal West of England Academy, 105th Annual Exhibition (group)

1958 National Museum of Wales, Contemporary Welsh Painting and Sculpture (group)

1958 National Museum of Wales, Pictures for Welsh Schools (group)

1958 Howard Roberts Gallery, Welsh Names in Painting (group)

1958 Whitechapel Art Gallery London, Pictures for Schools (group)

1962 Howard Roberts Gallery (3 person show)

1963 Dartington Art Gallery, New Painting in Devon (group)

1969 Dartington Art Gallery, Coon, Davies, Oliver, Weeks (4 person show)

1991 Davies Gallery South Devon College, Davies and Davies (father & son)

1995 Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, Davies and Davies (father & son) 

COLLECTIONS:

Victoria and Albert Museum

Derby Museum & Art Gallery

National Museum of Wales

Arts Council of Great Britain

The Contemporary Art Society

London County Council

Leicester Education Authority

London Education Authority

Welsh Arts Council

Steel Company of Wales

British Nylon Spinners

and other private collections