Davina Jackson( b 1971) is a figurative artist based in London where she currently works from a studio at Kingsgate workshops. She studied at Central St Martins and The Byam Shaw School of Art and completed her three year postgraduate at the Royal Academy Schools where she was awarded the Gold Medal for painting in her final year. Whilst juggling motherhood alongside her career as an artist, her work has featured in numerous group and mixed exhibitions, among them fifteen appearances at The Royal Academy Summer Show. She has had eight solo shows, presenting work nationally and internationally, two of which were curated by the art historian and critic , Edward Lucie-Smith. Her work is represented in both private and public collections and throughout her career has won many awards, the most recent, being the Highly Commended Prize and reaching the final shortlist for first prize for the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize, currently exhibited at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. In 2023 she was elected as a member of the Royal Watercolour Society. In 2024 Davina was also shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize
Davina’s work uses space to explore emotion, memory and introspection. Through mark making, painting and the simplification of form, she examines the quiet, everyday spaces where our shared humanity can be most visible. In the quiet corners of daily life, where silences hold meaning, she observes the way we inhabit our bodies through subtle gestures and reveal inner truths through eye contact and body language. Her work explores moments of stillness which can invite a more reflective response to our external world.
She draws inspiration from observing ordinary moments and drawing on poetic sources: theatre, storytelling, photography, and her personal lived experience all inform her work, offering a quiet yet resonant investigation into what it feels to be human.
Her practice includes an experimental focus, painting on found book covers, objects already rich with history, narrative and material presence. These surfaces provide not only a pre-existing palette of colour and tone that spark intuitive responses, but also a conceptual entry point into another’s world where she can explore the tension between inherited meaning and personal expression. Using the book cover as both a physical and symbolic to promote a more layered interpretation.
