BORN IN SEATTLE (USA), the black American artist Noah Davis (1983-2015) led a brief but productive life. Son of a lawyer and an educator, Noah became addicted to painting during his early teenage years. By the age of 17, he had his own studio. He studied art at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City between 2001 and 2004, and from 2004 onwards he lived and worked mainly in Los Angeles. Until 11 May 2025, there is an excellent exhibition of his works (mainly paintings) at the Barbican Centre Gallery in London. Until I visited this show, I had never heard of Noah Davis, but I am pleased that I have now ‘discovered’ him and his work.

Noah’s lifelong aim was (to quote what is recorded in Wikipedia as having been said by him):

“… to just show black people in normal scenarios, where drugs and guns are nothing to do with it …”

And to portray these scenarios in images created to illustrate:

“… where black aesthetics and modernist aesthetics collide …”

Although most of the paintings illustrate mundane or normal aspects of the lives of Black American people, Noah does so in ways that make the ordinary seem less ordinary and more magical.

In a documentary film that visitors to the exhibition can watch, Noah, who comes over as being a delightful person, made an interesting point. He said that in some forms of art like film, theatre, and literature, a story can gradually develop as the performance or novel proceeds. In painting, on the other hand, the artist must create an image that tells the whole story from start to finish, all on one canvas. This is something he does successfully.

In 2015, Noah was diagnosed with a rare but usually lethal carcinoma. Even while lying in bed in hospital, he continued to create images. In fact, he made 70 wonderful small works (many of them experiments in abstraction) while undergoing treatment for the disease that tragically ended his life. Many of these works are shown in the exhibition. During the month before his death, he made three large canvases, each one expressing his anticipation of his life’s imminent ending. One depicts two girls asleep on a sofa. This picture honours togetherness and restfulness. Another depicts a funeral. And the third shows a man walking in front of self-storage lockers. This image represents the loneliness in which each of us leaves the world of the living.

Having become acquainted with the creativity of Noah Davis, I feel that it is a great tragedy that this wonderfully poetic artist lived for such a brief time.