The Need To Know.
My very first reaction to seeing one of Danny's paintings was much like everyone else I've since shown. "Wow! What is that? How did you do it?" When he didn't readily answer, I simply stared, gathering in the light of the piece and its indefinable place in my inventory of the world.
I was struck by my primal emotional reaction. Pretty,
yes. Deep, totally. Unique, certainly - at least as far as
my understanding of art went. But I'm not an artist, or
critic, or collector, just a guy who admires beauty.
Beautiful? Absolutely!
I just had to know more – to find out everything I
could about the work. Later he would comment on that fact,
the way I tried again and again to get an
explanation from him. Seems the what and
how and why and so on were just the kind
of things the work was supposed to escape from – a
dependency on meaning hiding in us all.
At the time, though, these ideas were far beyond me, and
all I could do was gather as much information on his
technique and style as I could. And in that understanding,
I've come to realize even more how very unusual and, as it
turns out, sacred the work really is.
Little did I know that I was witnessing the tail end of
a long and deliberate process of creation spanning nearly
two decades. Danny began painting as the last act of
release from a conventional successful career in
publishing. And here I was, stumbling agog into the hot
edge of a painting career that, even if it had yet to be
rewarded financially, had produced immeasurable reward in
terms of freedom and creative expression.
Danny started this work in 1987 with simply a stroke,
brush to paper, without regard for color or image or
finished product. His interest was to see what happened
when his action was recorded. Each stroke revealed
something about the quality of the action itself, and each
painting was finished only because it just seemed finished.
Fast forward to the 21st century and this approach has
matured into an eloquent articulation of the sublime.
The paintings you'll see in these pages are free; they
have no basis in the artist's desire to create an image.
This freedom, however, does have a price. The place Danny
resides with his art is only reachable by abandoning the
desires and prejudices and explanations we normally carry
with us and into what we make.
This art is quite literally from an unknown world.
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