Ariel Davis
Ariel Davis is an artist based in Fort Worth, Texas whose work explores memory, time, and shared experience through painting, sculpture, and public art.
Message
Ariel Davis is an interdisciplinary artist based in Fort Worth, Texas whose work explores memory, time, and shared experience through painting, sculpture, and public art. Drawing from personal narrative, family history, and everyday rituals, her practice reflects on how meaning is carried through ordinary objects, gestures, and acts of exchange.
Her work often centers the ways stories, values, and traditions move between generations. Symbolic objects such as fruit, vessels, and heirlooms appear alongside figures and landscapes, linking intimate human moments with the broader rhythms of the natural world. In recent work, Davis has turned increasing attention to landscape and sky as spaces that suggest continuity and the eternal, placing personal memory within a larger sense of time, place, and shared human experience.
Davis holds a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin and has exhibited widely throughout Texas. Her work has been included in Texas Vignette, Marfa Invitational Open, and exhibitions at the Arlington Museum of Art and the Amarillo Museum of Art. In 2025, she debuted her solo exhibition, A Humble Gift, at Artspace111 in Fort Worth, presenting a body of work centered on inheritance, humility, and the act of giving.
Her practice spans intimate studio works and large-scale public projects, including murals and permanent installations for prominent civic and commercial spaces such as Globe Life Field. Across these formats, Davis creates work that is narrative-driven and accessible, inviting reflection through familiar forms and symbolic imagery.
Her work has been recognized and featured by Create! Magazine, Glasstire, PaperCity Fort Worth, Fort Worth Magazine, and more. In addition to her studio practice, Davis has been deeply engaged in the arts community through non profits including Art Tooth (2017-2020) and currently the Love Texas Art Foundation, which organizes the Call for Texas Artists for the Texas Juried Exhibition offering one of the largest art prizes for artists in Texas. Through her curatorial and consulting work, she has collaborated with artists, institutions, and civic partners to support meaningful, site-responsive projects.
She is currently focused on expanding her studio practice, speaking engagements and curatorial work.
Statement
I am a Fort Worth-based interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of memory, identity, and connection mostly through painting and sculpture. As an eighth-generation Texan, my creative practice is deeply informed by place, tradition, and personal memory. I use imagery drawn from everyday life, including family heirlooms, shared traditions, landscape, and interpersonal gestures.
My process begins with observation and documentation. I work with photography, collage, and digital manipulation to create source material, which I translate into narrative figurative and realist paintings, sculpture, and large scale public artworks. Though grounded in realism, my work embraces expressive mark-making, bold color, and moments of abstraction. Symbolism plays an important role in my work. Ordinary objects, natural elements, and familiar gestures become symbols alluding to something deeper. I am interested in how these symbols shift meaning depending on context and how they can invite viewers to bring their own stories into the work.
I collaborate closely with family and friends to infuse my work with intimacy and authenticity. My paintings and murals reflect emotional responses to social issues, filtered through the lens of contemporary feminine life in Texas. Whether working on canvas or in the public realm, I approach each project with curiosity, adaptability, and a desire to connect people to place. I aim to create visuals that hold tension and tenderness, sparking reflection and conversation.