In 1988, Julyan Davis left art school in London to follow a lost piece of history: the story of Napoleonic exiles in the canebrakes of the Deep South. A brief adventure became a lifetime’s career as an American painter. Over thirty-five years, Davis has painted hundreds of places now lost to neglect or gentrification, He is known here for his documentation of the changing face of Asheville. Parallel to this journalistic work, he has made large-scale narrative work based on forgotten histories and folklore. These shows have toured museums in collaboration with musicians, storytellers and historians. Davis’s debut novel ‘A History of Saints’ (set in Asheville during the Great Recession of 2008) won the Foreward Indies 2021 gold award for humor and was a semifinalist for the 2022 Thurber Prize in American Humor.
