Magic Windmill by Alan Davie
He was born in Grangemouth and studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1930s. An early exhibition of his work came through the Society of Scottish Artists. He also has a great love for Cornwall.
Davie travelled widely and in Venice became influenced by other painters of the period, such as Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró, as well as by a wide range of cultural symbols. In particular, his painting style owes much to his affinity with Zen. Having read Eugene Herrigel's book Zen in the Art of Archery (1953) he has assimilated the spontaneity which Zen emphasises. Declaring that the spiritual path is incompatible with planning ahead, he has attempted to paint as automatically as possible, which is intended to bring forth elements of his unconscious. In this, he shares a vision with surrealist painters such as Miro, and he has also been fascinated by the work of seminal psychoanalyst Carl Jung.
