Davon Brantley

BFA, Cleveland Institute of Art

Brantley is a Cleveland-based artist, implementing self-portraiture and psychology within his work and drawing inspiration from the dissociative behaviors that happen as a result of life experiences and trauma. Brantley states that he is “guiding the audience through my own narratives involving experiences of colorism, racial stereotyping, and meditations on death, life, sexuality and masculinity.” Through the use of his own image, the viewer is presented with images of someone who is not themselves, who may or may not share the same experiences as him and someone who is actively disrupting expectations based on identity, allowing Brantley to create a mythos about his life as a black man, utilizing conventions from the renaissance and baroque periods to set up dramatic compositions and imagery with absurd realism.

Brantley received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in Drawing in 2018. He has been able to exhibit and curate in spaces such as: Bay Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, CAN Triennial, the Morgan Conservatory, Indianapolis Arts Center, Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, the Museum of Creative Human Art and more recently the Florence O’Donnell Wasmer Gallery in Ursuline Ohio. Davon works as a Senior Admissions Counselor at the Cleveland Institute of Art while also balancing his Fine Arts career. Mentoring potential artists who want to take their art careers to the next level is something that has been of the upmost importance for his career. Demystifying the arts for not only the young but for their parents/family as well is a mission he takes as serious as his messages through his visual art practice.