Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present a new series of figurative paintings by Jeremy Okai Davis. In his exhibition titled, A Good Sport, Davis focuses on Black Americans in the fields of sports and academia who navigated complex ideologies of “sportsmanship” throughout their professional careers.
Several paintings are the largest Davis has ever created for an exhibition and include incredibly expressive, layered brushstrokes that invite the viewer to focus on every detail of the portrait.
Ranging from the unrecognized heroes of professional baseball and basketball players to Kentucky Derby jockeys and college athletes, the artist’s subjects possess an exalted, emotional depth that transmits beyond the painted surface. In this new body of work Davis’s thoughtful and generous considerations of representation, technique, form and color simultaneously highlight his muses and allow them to embody their own stories.