Bienvenue sur le site: See also the related academic/research site at
http://www.wholearthmedia.com
New artwork site/ Voir aussi mon nouveau site ...
http://www.tom-davies-art.weebly.com/
and the professional profile/profil professionel at
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/prof-tom-davies-2685b843
 Professor Tom Davies FRSA. Artist and Art Educator.
Born in Liverpool UK in 1950 Tom has devoted his career to art and design practice. He is married with two children. His work ranges across a broad variety of creative media, principally drawing, painting and ceramics. Capturing the transient and enigmatic, the work charts his encounters with people and places, memories and experiences. Committed to the retention of the traditional skills associated with image construction, he seeks to combine this with the investigation of the interface between ‘impression’ and ‘documentation’.
 Tom’s work is accessible to a wide audience including contemporary art collectors and private enthusiasts. The provenance for the work is evidenced in the academic track record of the artist and the self-evident quality of the work produced. Over the past 30 years his work has been sold through many private showings and competition viewings. The context for exhibiting work encompasses the extremes of a craftsmen’s exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and portfolios in virtual galleries hosted by the European Virtual School and the International Society for Education through the Arts.
 Working in the United Kingdom at his home in the West Midlands and at his studio in Vendee Sud, France, he has maintained a commitment to studio practice alongside his highly demanding post as Head of the School of Art Education in Birmingham.
A small collection of work is available for viewing at this website with other work on request. Each painting is a canvas original, on an immaculate stretcher selected for each composition. Unframed canvases are also designed to hang without framing.
Bienvenue sur le site web: vous pouvez aussi consulter le site lié universitaire / de recherche au profil www.wholearthmedia.com et professionnel à www.linkedin.com/pub/tom-davies/43/5b8/268
Le professeur Tom Davies FRSA/Birmingham. UK. Artiste et professeur d'art.
Né à Liverpool UK en 1950 Tom a consacré sa carrière à l'art et la pratique du design. Il est marié avec deux enfants. Son travail s’exprime à travers une large gamme de supports créatifs, principalement le dessin, la peinture et la céramique. Capturer le transitoire et l’énigmatique, il restitue ses rencontres avec les gens et les lieux, les souvenirs et expériences. S’il tient à préserver les compétences traditionnelles qu’il associe à la construction d'image, il cherche à combiner cela avec la recherche de l'interface entre ‘'impression’ et ‘documentation’.
Le travail de Tom est accessible à un large public, y compris aux collectionneurs et aux amateurs d'art contemporain privé. L’œuvre produite est de qualité, comme l’atteste aussi le palmarès de l’artiste. Au cours des 30 dernières années, son travail a été vendu à travers de nombreuses expositions privées et des concours. Son œuvre a été montrée dans des contextes aussi extrêmes qu’une exposition d’artisans au Victoria and Albert Museum de Londres et des portfolios dans des galeries virtuelles hébergées par l'Ecole virtuelle européenne et la Société internationale pour l'éducation par les arts.
Tout en travaillant chez lui au UK dans les West Midlands ou dans son studio du sud Vendée , en France, il est resté attaché à la pratique en atelier, assurant en même temps son poste très exigeant de Directeur de l'École d'éducation artistique à Birmingham.
Un échantillon de son travail est disponible pour consultation sur ce site avec d'autres travaux sur demande. Chaque tableau est une toile originale, sur un cadre en bois sélectionnés pour chaque composition. Des toiles non encadrées sont également conçues pour être accrochées sans encadrement.
A veil is drawn on a possible exit. 2011. from Exodus set (departure)
Personal Biographical notes: Alumni. Goldsmiths College, London
Having taught the ‘subject’, ‘discipline’ or ‘area of experience’ for over 40 years, I have seen the benefits of a progressive, liberal and liberating attitude towards the contribution that the arts can make to pupils’ learning. Pitted against this there has been a significant growth in the perceived need for utilitarian accountability based on economic factures. Both have always been a dimension of educational policy and each has its own rationale backed by theoretical reasoning.
As a secondary school teacher and teacher trainer I know the demands of the job as ‘practice’ and that the comparative luxury of reflecting on the various theoretical perspectives is easy to resist. Indeed many teachers and trainee teachers, after qualifying, do not consider theory as an essential aspect of their role. Researchers, in contrast, frequently have little experience of ‘practice’ and tend to regard it as non-essential in reflecting on teaching and learning. With a foot in both camps, my career history has traversed the conflicts and compromises of specialist art and design education with fond memories of what appears to be the halcyon days of low levels of prescription, the elevated status of personalised learning and teaching as an extension of the creative arts process (individual/collaborative learning, individual choice, and experimental delivery).
I trained as a teacher on the postgraduate ‘Art Teachers Diploma’ (a forerunner of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education: PGCE) at Goldsmith’s College, London in 1972-73 after completing my degree at Manchester School of Art and Design (soon after to become Manchester Metropolitan University: MMU). Arriving there, I was reassured to find no rubric for practice (no requirement for utilitarian planning templates such as ‘schemes of work’, lesson planners etc) or indeed, any National Curriculum – all this was still to come. Instead we were encouraged to reflect on what we already knew as artists, supplementing this specialist knowledge with further research, and speculating as to how we could make a contribution in what were becoming very large London comprehensive schools. Lectures supported the challenge and many of the specialist gurus of that time made a contribution. Interestingly, however, many of these contributors to the theoretical underpinning had no specific comment for teaching art in secondary schools other than the fact that questioning assumptions was paramount. Some from my particular year included Bert Irvin (painter), Harry Thubron (artist/post-16 educator), Nell Dunn (playwright), Roger McGough (performance poet) and Richard Gregory (neuroscientist) who, in different ways, stressed the creative possibilities of knowledge. For those who remember this course in the early 1970’s they will recall the unprepossessing course base as ‘M@B Motors’, a location that gave the adventure a frisson of revolution. In my case the ‘training’ took place alongside my own development as an artist and this appeared to be valued by Goldsmith’s staff as ‘practising’ art seemed a prerequisite for teaching the subject. Buoyed up with extremely positive experiences I exhibited work at the Craftsman’s Art Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 2003 (1) and was interviewed by Eduardo Paolozzi at the Royal Collage of Art (RCA) for a place on the research programme in the ceramics department. Reassuringly, to become a teacher was not necessarily the confirmed destination as doing this postgraduate course was, for many, diagnostic rather than a professional affirmation. My personal artwork was unusual as it combined Fine Art intension with a traditional craft form (ceramics) and I enjoyed modest, but short lived, success having a small studio in Herne Hill, London, as part of a local sponsorship initiative. The application for the RCA was soon considered unsound as the two year commitment came at a cost and required funding that I did not have. More particularly my research focus on ‘ceramic furniture’ was whimsical in the extreme! I reasoned that teaching was both a personal challenge and a financial necessity.
Teaching brought its own rewards with untypically rapid promotion over three years and the exceptional good fortune of being identified by Her Majesties Inspectors (HMI) as one of 14 art departments in the country exhibiting what they thought were the characteristics of ‘good practice’. (2) In my case the commendable features of my department included ‘collaborative initiatives (such as vertical mixed age groups) and the relevance to ‘transferable employable skills’ (textiles/print/photography/ceramics).
Moving to the Midlands in 1988 to take up a post at the Birmingham School of Art I was given the opportunity to contribute to one of the largest PGCE programmes in the UK (72 students rising to 91 students in 1992). I accepted leadership of the programme from 1990 and embarked on a project to develop high expectations for art and design enquiry based on the ‘risk’ ventures endorsed by the Goldsmiths experience. Challenges were welcome and accolades associated with related research followed (Bursary Prize, National Guidance: PGCE Teacher Training, (3) Teacher Training Agency Critical Studies case files, Arts in Schools, HMI working groups (4), publications and International collaborations). The combination of this serendipitous contribution culminated in a Professorship and the role of Head of School of Art/Design Education but the tide in educational policy had already started to turn and the viability of a demonstrably successful PGCE programme, outside of a university ‘education department’, was not considered tenable in the view of Ofsted inspectors who had ‘marked our card’, so to speak, as unorthodox and unsupportable in their revised ‘framework for inspection’. Here the Ofsted policy was to grade the particular university for the general provision of teacher training rather than individual courses in different faculties/department (this being true in our case). Consequently, and without consultation, the course and the PGCE art/design staff were redeployed to the education department ending what had been a traceable training for specialist teachers that had its roots in this particular late 19th century School of Art. Personal health issues followed this demise but two years later, restored to my former self, I continued with the research originally a major part of my doctoral thesis and looked for opportunities to continue a contribution albeit outside of my former institution.
Presently, I am very active as a painter with a studio and small gallery space in France. In addition I am researching the demise of art education in UK schools and leading, on a very much part-time basis, a Fine Art module at another university.
1) Craftsman’s Art Exhibition and Publication. New work by British Craftsmen at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1973. Exhibits included ‘environmental object’ slip-cast clay and Perspex (1972) and ‘stoneware kitchen cabinet’ slip-cast clay, decorative slips and underglazes (1972).
2) Art in Secondary Education 11-16, Department for Education and Science, 1983, Publisher 1983. 14 Art Departments.
3) Supporting Assessment for the award of Qualified Teacher’s Status. National Exemplification Material for Specialist Teacher Training, Secondary Art and Design (publication and Video training materials). Publisher Teacher Training Agency, London 1998. www.education.gov.uk/get-into-teaching (past contact www.teach-tta.gov.uk archive.
Publication number 98/2-00
4) The Arts Inspected, Good Teaching in Art, Principal Author Peter Jones HMI, Office for Standards in Education, (Ofsted). Contribution of school case files – West Midlands and consultation. Heinemann 1998.
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