The Johnson Center for the Arts will host an artists’ reception Thursday for Montgomery artists’ David Keith Braly and Barbara Davis whose work will be featured through July 15 at the TCA on East Walnut Street.

The reception will be from 6 until 8 p.m. Thursday and the public is invited.

Braly is an architect and artist who believes that creation is an innate function and responsibility of being human.

“What we make and build is both our world and how we see our world. It is both representation and vehicle,” he said. “For me, architecture and art are forms of self-expression and of knowledge. Knowledge includes history – real or imagined, so precedent is inextricably linked to creativity.”

Braly’s artwork is about the Architectural Landscape – that which is intentionally made and layered over time through varied use.

Braly said this “landscape’ contains many histories and is made of many fragments, each representative of something no longer there, yet fully present in our imaginations.

“It is David Braly’s quest to find, interpret and reveal the fullness of this landscape,” said Aaron Johnson, JCA designer.

Davis has painted since the age of 14. While working primarily in the banking industry, she held to the hope of pursuing her art as an avocation. She worked to eventually become a full-time artist. She painted portraits full time in the mid-1990s. Then, in 2004, she began painting “en plein air” and that changed her life and opened many doors.

En plein air painting is about leaving the four studio walls behind and experiencing painting and drawing in the landscape.

“Barbara Davis paints in oils and loves to paint the effect of light,” Johnson said. “She paints landscapes, still life, portraits, figures and animals.

“Since I love to paint the effect of light, my subject matter is across the board,” Davis said. “But I find my heart is always drawn to the skies.”

The JCA Artists Reception on Thursday will be an opportunity for the community to meet two incredibly talented artists from the River Region, Johnson said.

“This is an opportunity to view the artists’ artwork and to hear them talk about their passions for their work as well as the process of their work,” Johnson said.