Photo credit: Frank Neufeld
Leah Davis (b.1986, Thurso, Scotland)
MA Fine Art - with Merit (2022)
BA Contemporary Art - First Class (2020)
Works from her studio in Lossiemouth, Scotland
Leah Davis (b.1986, Thurso, Scotland) is a Scottish artist working primarily in oil. Her practice has grown from a long-standing curiosity about identity, memory, and the quieter psychological landscapes we carry within us. Through figurative work that moves between the symbolic and the intimate, she explores how personal history and inherited narratives become ingrained in the body over time.
Growing up in Caithness, she became aware early on of a sense of otherness that never quite left. That feeling continues to shape her practice. Her paintings combine vulnerability and resilience, depicting solitary figures that seem suspended between inner and outer worlds.
In 2026, she began developing Machair, a body of work that returns to her home county of Caithness. Working with what she calls, altered relics, and weathered material surfaces, the series considers preservation, erosion, and what it means to carry a place with you long after you have left.
The work will be exhibited at Thurso Art Gallery in January/February 2027.
Davis holds an MA in Fine Art (Merit) and a First Class BA in Contemporary Art. Her work has been exhibited across Scotland and internationally, and she was runner-up in the 2023 Highland Art Prize.
Her paintings continue to resonate with collectors, curators, and kindred spirits alike.
“I grew up in the northernmost town on mainland Scotland, surrounded by vast moorland and the wild sea. From an early age, I was drawn to stories, myths, and the world’s odd little curiosities. I often felt slightly out of step with those around me, and that sense of difference has shaped both who I am and the work I make.
My grandmother’s love of clowns and witchcraft also left a lasting impression. Those early fascinations still surface in my visual language. Ruffles, bowties, and recurring symbols act as bridges between personal memory and something older, universal, and strangely comforting.
My paintings grow from lived experiences. They are not portraits in a traditional sense, but reflections on interior life. I am interested in the things we carry quietly, and in how our experiences, family history, and inherited stories continue to shape us.
With my current series, Machair, this enquiry turns more directly toward place. Not as a place I left behind, but as something I continue to carry. A way of understanding how the memories, the stories, and the history of your hometown become internalised.
Through my work, I create moments of recognition. Not reassurance, but a pause. A sense that what feels unusual or solitary may, in fact, be shared.”
