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ELVIS DAVIS: BIOGRAPHY

Elvis Davis has pop art running through his veins. As a young boy growing up in Skegness, he was hit between the eyes and ears by a one-two sucker punch of pop art and rock and roll, which he was introduced to by his older brother, who was an art student in the early 60s. While his brother painted in the basement of their house, he would listen to a never ending soundtrack of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones, Howlin’ Wolf and Bo Diddley, and the young Elvis would sneak in to watch him work and drink in the iconic images of his album covers alongside books on Peter Blake, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Warhol, whose silkscreens left an indelible impression on him.
Having spent several years trying to work out what he wanted to do with his life, Elvis Davis’ creative dam burst, and having taken on the odd job as a film extra, after a couple of chance meetings, he began working full time in the wardrobe department on a variety of big budget movies including Braveheart, Richard III and Saving Private Ryan.
During the downtime between shoots, Elvis enrolled in a course at the London College of Printing and within a couple of years, he started to attract the attention of several cutting edge galleries around the country. As time went on, his work got bigger and better, and he began printing portraits onto canvas. The original Rolling Stone, Brian Jones, was the first, reflecting his lifelong love affair with the band, and his homages to Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Bo Diddley and various other icons soon followed.
“I started to believe I was really doing something special when I did a silkscreen of Lee Marvin,” Elvis recalls, “an image inspired by a scene from The Killers, where he confronts his nemeses. I added an extra gun toting arm to give the picture symmetry…and bingo. I used some comic book colours, stretched it onto a 6’x3’ frame and took it over to the Manhattan Gallery, who immediately hung it in the window. After I left, it was spotted by two people, who actually began to argue over it. The picture was sold to the highest bidder, and it was way over the original asking price. It felt like I’d written my first hit song.”
After several successful shows and a string of films which had featured his silkscreens, Elvis was introduced to the Zebra Gallery in Hampstead, who gave him his own one man show. Soon his name was on every hip lip in London, and his pictures of everyone from Lennon and Hendrix to Jagger and Richards were proudly hanging in the homes of a host of rock and film star homes including Liam and Noel Gallagher, who both bought Elvis’ Lennon silkscreens.
Elvis works alone, and his images are painstakingly selected. When it comes to picking an image to work from, the most important criteria is their innate ability to work specifically as screenprints.
“Usually, more than one screen is required to create the art,” he explains. “A hand printed original is exactly what it is. I hand blend the screen ink, often with additives, or ‘liveners’ to give each image something unique. For example, diamond dust gives a sort of metallic look. Sometimes I smear ink directly onto the paper , giving a unique abstract result that cannot be replicated…a true one off. A similar method is used on canvas, the surface being primed with paint then printed with screen ink. Sometimes areas of the pictures are hand painted, a method used extensively by Warhol, although he rarely worked alone.”
To get into the zone when he is working, Elvis immerses himself in the music of the subject : Sticky Fingers or Exile On Main St for the Jagger / Richards paintings, Highway 61 or Blood On The Tracks for the Dylan images. Music really is running through his veins, as you would expect from a man who calls himself Elvis. “No one can say I don’t put rock and roll into my art,” he laughs.
No matter what subject he depicts, Elvis Davis’ chic and unique silkscreens have one thing in common…they’re all iconic, ineffably memorable, timeless and true. To look at his images is to enter a mythical and mesmerizing, multicoloured, multilayered ocean of sound and vision  – a perfectly formed fusion of pop and art.

By Jonathan Wingate