AN EXHIBITION of work by artist Alan Davie is going on display at the Tincleton Gallery from Friday (17) until Sunday, July 17.

Some 24 pieces have been selected for Magical Transformations from the largest private collection of Davie’s work, all of which date from the mature second half of his career. A gallery spokesman said: "It is unusual to be able to put so many of his works on show together, and so this is a significant exhibition. We are sure Davie himself would be delighted to be exhibiting here as we are also a popular concert venue with a successful series of high quality classical and jazz musicians from around he world playing here throughout each year."

Scottish artist Davie died in 2014, some months before his 94th birthday.

Whilst studying art at the Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1930s he showed great talent and rather like Picasso, an impressive technical ability in both drawing and painting.

His early works during this period includes still-lives and intense self-portraits. At this time he also became inspired by hearing contemporary jazz music and took up the tenor saxophone.

The second world war curtailed his art studies and he served with the Royal Artillery spending some of this time in Italy and Greece. After the war, Davie started playing tenor saxophone professionally, and married Janet Gaul “Bili”, a young art student. In addition

to music he also wrote poetry, made pots, designed textiles and worked as a jeweller.

In 1948 Davie was able to take up a deferred scholarship that allowed him to travel round Western Europe, and here he was introduced to the beauty of Byzantine and Romanesque art, which he linked to the Celtic tradition. He also arrived in time for the first Venice Biannale since the war and it was here that he first came into contact with the American Abstract Expressionists.

Tincleton Gallery is showing a body of Davie’s work that dates from 1980 through until 2013. The private collection that is being exhibited belongs to a lifelong jazz enthusiast and displays the mature authority and steady consistency that marks out the latter half of Davie's career.

As well as hanging exhibitions for ten months of each year, the gallery hosts a regular concert series throughout the year ncluding international classical and jazz musicians of the stature of Ronan Magill, Angela Brownridge, Duncan Honeybourne, Ana Manero, Arturo Serna, John Law and Katharine Lam.

*Alan Davie exhibition, Tincleton Gallery, Tincleton near Dorchester, open Friday, May 17 to Sunday, July 17 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday each week from 10am to 5pm.