Marlon Darrell Davidson

About Marlon

Marlon Darrell Davidson, (88), died on Saturday, May 4th, 2024, at the Good Samaritan Nursing Home in Blackduck, MN.

He was born in Deer River, Minnesota, on June 6th, 1935, to Woodrow Edison and Carmen Ilene (Waller) Davidson, and lived in Dora Lake, MN, for the first fourteen years of his life. Then the family moved to Grand Rapids, MN, where Marlon graduated from high school in 1953. He attended Bemidji State College, graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor of Science degree, and became a licensed teacher. He taught visual arts in the West St. Paul School system for twenty years where he was department chairman.

Throughout this period of time, Marlon produced art and exhibited his work in the Twin Cities area. He had a professional relationship with the Suzanne Kohn Gallery on Grand Avenue. Marlon won numerous awards for his art work, and his work is in many private and public collections throughout the Midwest and across the country.

Marlon met his life partner, Don Knudson, before leaving Bemidji, and the two men moved to St. Paul, MN, in 1959. They had a large, 1894, Victorian house on Laurel Avenue where they lived until 1980 when they moved to their summer place on Hand Lake, near Pine River, MN. Marlon recorded this experience in his memoir, now a collector’s item, “The Pig Barn,” one of several publications that Marlon had during his lifetime.

They lived in this paradise for seven years until they moved to the Bemidji area in 1987, to an eighty-acre plot of land with a derelict farm house which his partner restored and to which he added a large studio and two bedrooms. They opened the bed and breakfast “Meadowgrove” and operated it for five years until Marlon began teaching as an adjunct instructor at Bemidji State University in the visual arts department. Marlon had an association with BSU for the last ten years of his teaching, both as an adjunct and also as a fixed-term instructor. He retired from teaching in 2006 and then devoted full time to writing and to making art, particularly with his partner, collaborations which are in public and private collections across the US and in Europe. Marlon had a solo retrospective art exhibit at the Watermark Art Center in 2015.

He was a life-long religious and political liberal. Marlon played piano and sang. Music was important in his life. He sang publicly with his sister, Dixine Woyach, and as a soloist. For many years, he was piano accompanist to the Headwaters Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bemidji, where he was a founding member.

After a sixty-one year partnership, Marlon and Don were united in marriage on Thanksgiving Day 2019 at the home of Patrick Lochwood and Tom Saga. Marlon said, “I got what I wanted in life, someone to love, a safe and happy home, and the freedom to make art.”

Marlon is survived by his long-time partner, Don Knudson, and his sister, Dixine Woyach of St. Peter, Minnesota. He was preceded in death by his parents, Woodrow and Carmen Davidson.

Marlon was a life-long Unitarian and often commented, “I am an agnostic who prays.” His cremains will be combined with his partner’s, and they will be scattered in a woodland setting.

memorial service

A Celebration of Life will be held in the summer.

Funeral/Cremation Provider: Cease Family Funeral Home