Boyd Gavin received his BA from University of California, Santa Cruz, and his MA from California State University, Sacramento.

Gavin paints in a very straightforward manner, with a loos brushstroke and bright palette that lends itself well to painting small, easily recognizable objects such as crayons and marbles. He says “I am drawn to the quirky shorthand style of artists like Fairfield Porter or David Park, artists who seem to invest even the himeliest of subjects with an offhand grandeur.”

He has exhibited work in multiple shows at the John Natsoulas Gallery, Caldwell Synder in San Francisco, and has work in the permanent collection of The Crocker Museum in Sacramento, California.

My work focuses primarily on still lifes and observations of suburban life, with occasional forays into figure painting. The paintings are worked up through direct study and bits of stored memory. All of it is contingent upon feeling. I want to draw the viewer close, in an almost conversational way.

It’s not necessarily a common likeness that I seek, but the deeper, abstract complexity that lies behind appearances. As a painter, I take my cues from the discordant effects that emerge accidentally in the process of making. These shards help me to locate the space that I’m constructing. This strikes me as a very organic way of fleshing something out on canvas, and it also paves the way for expression to develop more intrinsically in the work.

I compose with feeling as much as I do with color or line. In other words, the point is to work through feeling rather than towards it. As such, my work tends to be more about states of reflection than any specific narrative. My aim is to embody the spirit or ultimate reality of my chosen subject.

—Boyd Gavin