Lottie Davies, “Untitled” from the series “Quinn”, 2014

#somereallygoodones, #lottiedavies, #quinnsdream

Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains,

Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at night the moon so unearthly bright,

Shining sweetly, shining down, where we dig the trenches and gather the heaps,

I dream, I dream, I dream.

-Walt Whitman “Old War Dreams” from “Leaves of Grass”, (1881-1882)

There is immediate pleasure in the photographs in Lottie Davies’ longterm project “Quinn 20214-2020”.

The artist’s quest is like that of her protagonist — impulsive, necessary, full of light and natural beauty. There is considerable pleasure to be had simply in engaging with her photographic landscapes and videos. Not much happens. Rapture, yes, but few events.

A young man, Quinn, is a walker, a young man who seems to travel with some direction but no evident purpose other than walking. We can learn more specifics from Davies’ written statements if we need those, but the visual evidence is suggestive, even full.

Quinn has an easy gait, without any urgency or determination. We can see the space Quinn is traveling through: the gorgeous scenery - green fields and leafy woods, rocky coastlines - epic and sublime. There don’t seem any other prepositions - he isn’t really walking from or to a place, but, rather, through.

The act of walking is simple and possibly complete. Maybe he is getting clarity by not having any real baggage. The suitcase he carries occasionally is light, possibly empty. What is that about? He encounters a few people, but they seem intrusive, outside of the story. Even the offer of berries by a young woman seems jarring, not simply for the symbolic readings one might take from the meeting.

Quinn’s solitude, his solitariness, seems to be the most important element.

Lottie Davies, “Untitled” from the series “Quinn”, 2014

Even if and when we have the occasion to examine his effects and journals, we may not find anything very revealing, a map and the odd talismanic or totemic stones he may have picked up in his walkabouts. In terms of spiritual guidance, Quinn doesn’t seem to have been visited with a planned route, even an imagined “song line”, to direct him.

Somehow the act of walking meditation is in and of itself complete. We can suppose that Quinn is “working out” something. There is no agenda. Quinn is walking in these Arcadian spots, and that should be enough information for the viewer.

Ms. Davies is a story teller, and Quinn is her visual bildungsroman, in which the young man ”comes of age”. Quinn is her “Werther”. Quinn searches out the capitalized states of being: the Sublime, Nature, and Romance (as in ideal and idyll).

And the viewer feels that release.

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