Davida Allen

In 1986 Davida Allen was one of the few female artists to win Australia’s most prestigious art award, The Archibald Prize. The subject of the portrait was her father-in-law, Dr John Shera.

Her work is outstanding in the true sense of the word. It is so very different in style to any other artist of her day. Her palette is strong. The brushwork is heavy. There is a sense of urgency in the work. It is powerful and bold. She is an expressionist and her paintings depict the struggle between the individual and society. Her subjects are generally of her immediate environment including her family and herself. The artist is an ordinary woman and wife. In these roles she is continually struggling to retain her artist’s imagination while she is challenged by the ceaseless domestic demands made on her heart and mind and body.

It was pointed out in 1987 that “a husband, fantasy lovers, children and the household are her main preoccupations and “ the subject matter of Davida’s art is often concerned directly with domestic life”. She is well known for her powerful images of female sexuality such as The Rude Painting (1984) in the Museum of Contemporary Art and feminine fantasy “The Sam Neill Series: 1986”. In an interview for Vogue in 1986 regarding the Sam Neill paintings she was quoted as saying that she “has long been chary of what she terms the “preciousness” of the women’s movement or that element of it which deliberately seeks to turn a key on its genitals and hand out a sign reading “forbidden territory, men not worthy to enter...Yet if we are truly feminist in the fullest sense of the word, we shouldn’t have felt we had to lock it away or be really careful about it. We should be chauvinist in our womanhood.”

Davida has written and illustrated two books, “The Autobiography of Vicki Myers: Close to the Bone” and “What is a Portrait?” She has held numerous group and solo exhibitions including the 1970’s-93 Biennale of Sydney, AGNSW, 1984: Australian Perspecta, AGNSW, 1985: and overseas in USA, Japan, Ireland.

She represented in the following collections as well as corporate and private collections in Australia and overseas.

According to Tom Hilton of The Guardian (UK) in relation to her work in “What is a Portrait”: -

“Davida is about to become a cult figure... She has managed to find a workable alliance between naive and contemporary expressionism.

Her complicated domestic sentiments can be highly sexual and not at all benign”

In terms of art practice Davida comments: -“the whole thing is VERY LIKE THE BIRTH ACT. The baby gets born out of blood and muck- The nursing staff GETS RID OF this blood and muck in order to concentrate on the BIGGER more PROFOUND topic- the baby... And so “perhaps” my drawings can be looked at along the same lines – The blood and muck.”

Davida was educated at Stuartholme Convent, Brisbane where she studied art under Betty Churcher from 1965-69. Following this she studied under Roy Churcher at the Brisbane Central Technical College.

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