Art Review: Shades of Mexico by Kiki Davis

On February 1, 2001 Fine Artist Kiki Davis finished her 16" by 13" painting Shades of Mexico. This realistic fine art print is put together with positive space, natural shapes, implied lines and bright exotic colors making you feel like you're actually there. To paint a better picture of this print, I'll start off by describing the background.

The ocean floats across the center of the painting, starting off with a light chlorine color at the end of the sand, then it darkens into a navy blue the closer it gets to the beginning of the sky. The sky is a pale blue color, but you can barely see it because it's behind so many white fluffy clouds. The sand is bright golden and turns into a darker orangish brown color towards the bottom border of the painting, with a patch of dark shadows from an umbrella tree. The umbrella tree's leaves, as a whole, are in the shape of a triangle, curved at the top. Its cylinder-shaped trunk is gray with tints of brown and thin branches rising into the leaves from the top. The outer leaves are golden brown from the sun and the inner ones are dark brown from the shade.

Under the tree is a sturdy tarnished green end table, with cubed rectangular legs and a brown wooden top in the shape of a square. Located on top of the table is a thick, dark vase of burgundy tropical flowers with green leaves. On either side of the vase are two slender greenish silver drinking glasses with a kiwi hanging over the mouth of one and a lemon over the other. Then in the center of the table, in front of the vase, is a thin, brown bowl of bright, orange fruit in the shape of almost perfect circles. Then on either side of the table are two white wooden beach chairs with backs in the shape of arrows, pointed on the top then curving down its sides. Its arms are thin, rectangular boards and its legs the same, but with jagged edges to keep it stable by wedging into the sand. Also, both chairs have a purplish-gray shadow on their backs and arms from the umbrella tree.

I can appreciate this painting because it made me feel like it was summer and I was laying out on the beach with the sun beaming on my face, listening to the squawking of seagulls or someplace tropical listening to the waves crashing against rocks and washing seaweed up onto the shore. I also liked it because of the exotic colors and tropical atmosphere that Kiki Davis tried to portray in the painting.