Kenturah Davis paints pictures with her words, making emphatic marks by applying oil paint with stamp letters. Her portraits encourage the viewer to contemplate the power of language because each line is imbued with a deeper meaning; form becomes intertwined with content. “I kept a notebook with my own writing and some quotes from other texts; occasionally, I’d do a small sketch,” Davis said of her decision to include words in her paintings. “On one particular page, my writing overlapped with a portrait that I sketched, and I realized that the quality of the written line was no different than the quality of a drawing line, except with the written line, we’ve assigned meaning to a sequence of marks made on the page.”
“Every mark had meaning and affirmed or embodied something relevant to the person in the image,” Davis continued, describing how she chooses the words in her paintings. “Over the years, I’ve chosen different kinds of text that exemplify ways that we put language to use.”
In 2020, her work will be featured in L.A. metro stations as a part of the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project, which will also show the work of artists such as
Mickalene Thomas and Rebeca Méndez. For the project, Davis created portraits of people who were associated with Inglewood, one of the areas the project will serve.
This excerpt is part of a longer article, which can be found below.