The Community Arts Council of the Alberni Valley is thrilled to continue our Featured Artist Series, shining a spotlight on one of our remarkable local creators every two weeks.
This installment highlights Dave Davies, a watercolourist who discovered his gift for painting shortly before retiring from a thirty-seven year teaching career in England and Canada. His thoughtful application of colour and sense of light bring depth to even the most ordinary subjects — old wood, weathered rock, a well-lived-in face.
For a decade, Davies was an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists, serving as show coordinator for the Arrowsmith branch, and was a resident artist at The Old School House Gallery in Qualicum Beach, where he could spend whole days at the easel. His award-winning work has appeared in the FCA’s magazine, Art Avenue, including a feature on his now well-known oyster shell paintings.
That project began while walking the shoreline at Columbia Beach, where Davies noticed the muscle attachment on discarded oyster shells — some pale, others dark and strikingly pretty, not unlike beach pebbles. He began painting pebble-like patterns onto the shells in acrylic, later adding handwritten text sealed with an acrylic spray. Over the years he’s painted more than two thousand of them, sold at TOSH and other local outlets, with proceeds going to support a Cambodian landmine survivor through university.
That connection to Cambodia runs deep: Davies and his wife spent much of their retirement travelling through Cambodia and neighbouring countries, photographing people they met along the way. Back home, he transformed many of those photographs into portraits — roughly forty in total — bringing the finished paintings back on their next trip to give to the subjects themselves.
Now settled in Port Alberni since 2024, Davies continues to work primarily in watercolour from home, most often from photographs rather than plein air, favouring the way a photograph fixes light and shadow in place. West Coast life has also drawn him toward painting boats, and he’s taken to collecting geoduck clam shells — trickier to find than oysters, as they require a sandy rather than pebbled beach — to paint with scenes of commercial fishing vessels.
His sketchbooks hold work from nine countries, and his paintings now hang in thirteen, from private collections abroad to homes right here in the Alberni Valley.
When asked what advice he’d offer an emerging painter, Davies said:
“I have benefitted from taking workshops from artists I admired. I can also recommend painting with a group in which you can share ideas and techniques.”
Follow our social media @alberniarts, website, and check the newspaper to discover the next incredible local artist in the Featured Artist Series!
