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View From Josh's Terrace
26" x 128" oil on canvas, 1999
Artist's Statement


I have to admit, I am a product of the urban environment.

As a child raised in New York, I was constantly confronted by the physical geometry of the city, with all its order and disorder. When I looked out my window I saw other buildings just like mine, buildings encased in even rows of bricks, punctuated by windows, doors and fire escapes, and fringed on top with the haphazard intersecting patterns of antennae and chimneys. As the sun moved overhead, I watched the shadows and the bright areas move, revealing new shapes of light and dark, new depths to the dimensions of buildings and train trestles. The city, for me, was full of wonder and mystery, planned yet chaotic.

This is the source of my aesthetic, and in all my work I seek to discover and maintain an underlying structural foundation. In my cityscapes I attempt to find some method to the urban ‘madness’, and in landscapes I try to capture the unifying pattern that is inherent in nature’s randomness. The play of light and color is an essential aspect of these patterns (I often work on a painting only at certain hours of the day, to better capture its specific light). It is my hope that my cityscapes invoke the same response as a beautiful landscape: that they have captured the essence of life, and that the patterns and colors of the piece are satisfying and nurturing…and that there is indeed beauty in everything, you just have to look for it.



Dan Portrait while Painting

Photo: Terry Dactyl Bumppo

 

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