Business deals over a beer isn’t a bad way to do business. It’s how I secured two fabulous new large pieces of art by a local artist, right off the walls of a Charlotte bar.

My monthly artist collaboration series features Rebecca Davis.

The pieces caught my eye through the window of the Grinning Mule restaurant and bar.   

My husband and I were riding our bikes around town.  He hadn’t seen the Grinning Mule so we rode to go check it out.  Grinning Mule was closed, but I could see Rebecca’s butterflies. They beckoned me.  I had to have them.  So I went to the dinner service that night and commandeered the Owner on duty to secure those pieces for me. 

The next day the Owners of Grinning Mule, Rebecca, and her partner, and me and my husband all met, and had a beer. We conducted an art deal right there in the parking lot of the Grinning Mule.  

Rebecca is a featured artist in Slate Interiors.  Her artwork is often colorful, full of texture, and depth.  She also produces larger scale pieces which are always great for creating drama.  

“My ultimate goal is to elicit a visceral response in the viewer. To communicate where words fail. When I start a painting, I never know where it will go but it has to make me feel something because if I don’t, you won’t,” said Davis.

One of her earliest memories is sitting at the kitchen table watching her mother paint and asking her for a paintbrush.

“I wanted to major in art but my father insisted that I have a career that I could, “fall back on”,” she said. “So, with regret,  I put my paintbrush down to pursue a totally different career path.”

Davis became an ER nurse and the mother of five boys. She said, “Needless to say, that kept my hand free of the elusive paintbrush for many more years.”

For 10 years, Davis called New Orleans home. She says the “Elegance and Decadence” of that city is in her blood and her art.

“Just as the beautiful buildings in the French Quarter have layer upon layer of patina, my work encompasses layer upon layer of texture,” Davis said. 

She achieves this through the use of multiple mediums: oil, acrylic, inks, wax, chalk, spray paint, dirt, sand, even shoe polish.  “Just about anything I can get my hands on,” she explains. “I build layers then take them away to create a painting that is ultimately whole.”

Just looking at Davis, she appears to be meant for such work.  As I visit with her in her studio she looks as graceful as her art. Her long flowing gray hair falls softly over her shoulders. Her wrist is layered with unique and artsy bracelets. On her finger is a giant ring. 

Davis said, “Once I finally picked it (a paintbrush) back up in my late 30’s, I never wanted to put it down again.”

I, for one, am incredibly grateful she didn’t.

You can see more of Rebecca’s art on her website and on Instagram @rdavis_art