Cartoon Allegory (2026), Paul Davis

What’s his work like? Well, for example…
Pictured in serried silhouette, the three Magi cameleers, presumably after they’d gate-crashed the baby Jesus’ birth and one of them declaims, “I think that went quite well.”

Or there’s Nostradamus calling out Sir Issac Newton for miscalculating the end of the world.

In another work we see the back of some glabrous geezer seated on the 243 bus, he’s staring out the window, TOTAL SILENCE FOR THIRTY MINUTES AND THEN: (baldy’s straight razor shaped speech bubbles cut the silence…) “HAH-HA” and “CUNT”.

Welcome to the stark, witty, obsessive, occasionally scabrous, always intriguingly observed world of artist Paul Davis. His art practice ranges from reportage: drawings of strangers and incidents that happen to occur in his presence. To beautifully simple, conceptually satisfying ideas such as when Davis pairs two drawing implements, a pen and a brush say. But then the pen is rendered by the brush and the brush by the pen: a brevity bordering on poetic.

Or, having drawn a mullet headed, dog collared ‘Rev.’ Simon Cowell riding a jet ski branded with the St. George’s Cross, here’s the artist’s account of what’s going on: “I started making a satirical drawing of Simon Cowell because of his egomaniacal and ultimately pointless show on Netflix. I managed less than five minutes viewing. It’s so bad. The drawing somehow turned out like this and I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s some sort of low priest of boy bands, a vapid vicar of monied cliché.”

The latest flyingleaps poster to hit the streets is Davis’ drawing titled Cartoon Allegory (2026). Trump would call it a calumny, evoking the current state of the US (not to mention the rest of the world) through a degradation of an iconic mouse and dog. For sure there’s a long tradition of artists critically, sardonically appropriating ‘much loved’ cartoon icons. Banksy’s ‘Napalm’ (2003) manages to skewer Disney, MacDonalds, capitalism and the arms industry in one dismal image.

The feeling aroused seeing Davis’ new flyingleaps poster is less horror, more profound disquiet. Okay, Woodstock lies mortally wounded which is grim but Mickey and Snoopy’s drug fuelled malaise elicits more sorrow than dread, even a degree of pity. As with the most effective critical images, we are not ‘told’ exactly what to think but can’t escape wondering what and who is responsible for the terrible state of things, what prompted this image of innocence lost. We have an inkling, of course. Cartoon Allegory is provocative but also a strangely moving work of critical satire. Equally spiffing seen on the streets or a domestic, workplace or studio wall near you.

Cartoon Allegory is now available in the HERE