About Carl
I am an artist with over fifty years of experience. I make drawings and sculpture. I have authored two books: Bipolar Bare and The Art Dockuments. Face to Face with Myself, my third book, I hope to publish in 2025. Commentaries on Art, Architecture, Culture, Mental Illness, and Essential Tremor, are created by me on an on-going basis.
Bipolar Bare, my first book, chronicles my struggle with mental illness and includes many of my drawings. My second book, The Art Dockuments, tells the story of my drive-by gallery in Los Angeles and also includes my drawings. Face to Face with Myself is about the self-portraits I drew from 1973 to 2023, the time when they were drawn, and the artists who influenced me. See link under Publications.
Although known as both architect and writer, my primary interest remains art. Following an extensive education in art and architecture at Yale University, the University of London, and the Art Institute of Chicago, I attended drawing groups in Chicago and Los Angeles, where I was a member of the Downtown art community since my move to the city in 1980. My drawings and sculpture were exhibited in LA at Exile Gallery, AAA Gallery, and a retrospective at the District Gallery in 2016. At Art Fairs in Zurich, Palma, Spain, New York, and Art Box Gallery at the Venice Biennale 2022, my work has been shown digitally. I founded and curated of the drive-by gallery, The Art Dock, from 1980 to 1986 in LA. The book, The Art Dockuments -Tales of the Drive-by Gallery was published in 2012. Many art, architectural and health periodicals: Stroll, UTurn, LA Architect, and Coagula Magazine, Tremor Talk and the Downtown LA newspaper, have included my writing. In 2009, a book titled Bipolar Bare, a memoir of my 30-year struggle with Bipolar Disorder, a condition common to many creative people, was published. The book won awards including an Eric Hoffer award for best memoir. People Magazine featured me in an article about people who have survived suicide. I maintain studios in Pasadena, California, and Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Above: Self-Portrait, 2014, 30”x 22”
Carlton Davis is a remarkable artist, and his deep knowledge of art history is exceptional. He invented a new form, the “diaphane,” that is all about light. Using his great drawing skills, from sketches and renderings of attractions and concepts, and his visually powerful self-portraits, he has applied the lessons of that knowledge to create a website that expresses something at once understandable but uncommon, making his work fascinating. As you explore the pages of this website, be prepared to see and appreciate a special and different achievement that is as old as the Renaissance and as new as the Information Age.
– Michael Levin, New York Times Best Selling Author