Tavin Davis was born in Billings, Montana, and holds BFA’s in Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Design from Montana State University. He is currently earning an MFA in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Davis is a landscape painter of sorts, a pattern painter of sorts, or perhaps some amalgamation of the two. Above all, he’s an observer. Davis spends much of his time tuning in to his surroundings, where what peaks his interest most is the persistence of patterns. Social, behavioral, seasonal, and celestial are all often subjects he negotiates in his paintings. He uses painting as a place to exercise subjectivity and agency within these large repetitious structures speaking to an at odds experience of living in a world ruled by them. Davis says of his work, “I get to make interpretations and interventions inside of very small images of very large things.”