After leaving Speyside High School, Angela attended the College of Commerce in Aberdeen, completing a course in retail display. She then completed an HNC in spatial design. Other than art classes at school, she has received no formal art training, so the work you see here is a combination of raw talent and a self-taught apprenticeship.
Angela Davidson Animal Art
Angela Davidson's art gallery and workshops are based at her home in rural Aberdeenshire, near the small village of Insch. The company is a partnership of husband and wife: Angela creates the original artwork and Sandy runs the business.
Angela produces her artwork on the upper level of the split-level gallery, where visitors can watch as she brings her latest creation to life using either pastels or acrylic paint. At the other end of the same traditional granite building are the workshops, where the complete range of Angela's prints are produced using the latest technology.
Printing in-house not only allows the couple to print-on-demand (and thus solve what would otherwise be a very big storage problem) but also allows them to maintain their own very high standards. As Sandy says: “We take great pride in what we produce and always work up to a standard rather than down to a price. Everything we create is a direct reflection on our craftsmanship, so we tend to be very fussy about the standard of prints leaving our workshops. We also find our customers like the fact they are dealing directly with the artist.”
Angela is entirely self-taught. Apart from lessons at school, she has received no formal training as an artist, so the work you see on this website is the result of a combination of raw talent and a very long apprenticeship.
“At school the only things I was ever any good at were sport and art,” says Angela, “so I still can't quite believe I've ended up with the best job in the world. Visitors always seem intrigued when they see how I create my pastel work, as all I use is the pastel stick and my fingers. Most of my acrylic work is done using my palette knife.”
It was in 2002 when Angela created her first close-up of cows heads; a style that culminated in a piece titled Snout About, which was so close to the cattle it featured only their noses. Then, in 2006, she produced her first all-black artwork - just in time for that year's Royal Highland Show. The artwork featured a black Highland bull on a black background. The prints sold well, and so Angela's now familiar style featuring all-black backgrounds was born.
The Aberdeenshire based couple are also raising funds in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. They're donating half the retail cost of their print No Turning Back to the London hospital's charity. The print features their son Lawrie and a Clydesdale horse called Jake. Since birth, Lawrie has been a regular visitor to Great Ormond Street, where the team in the Craniofacial Unit have saved his life on a number of occasions. The family then decided it was time for some payback. So, with help from friends and by raffling the original framed artwork of No Turning Back, they have raised over £15,000; a figure which increases with each subsequent print sale. As a note of interest, if you have a close look at the print, you might notice that the road on which Jake and Lawrie are traveling looks to be surfaced with something similar to cobbles. Closer inspection will reveal the road's surface is actually formed by one repeated sentence: Life can take you anywhere. It's a phrase which seems appropriate, given the precarious nature of Lawrie's first few years of life.
Finally, we hope you enjoy Angela's prints as much as she enjoyed creating the original artwork. We also hope that at some time you'll be able to visit the gallery and see her doing what she still insists is... “The best job in the world!”