Encountering The Unknown.
There's a lot to this work, as there is in each painting itself. I've tried to capture some of that richness here, but looking back through the site I realize it will take some time for me to fully record everything I have been learning and experiencing.
The only way to get a handle on what Danny is doing, what his work means, is to see it in person. To see it, not just look or glance or pass over it, but let the light — and the implications — soak in.
For perhaps it is the utter originality of this work that makes it so powerful, so valuable as art.
There is no precedent here. This is not work based on some other artist's style. This is not an interpretation of a genre, or a derivation of a school of thought, or even an attempt to create "gallery worthy" or "marketable" work. It is not even conceived. It is merely made. This is pure painting and pure expression purified by its lack of preconception.
And because there is nothing like it anywhere, because seeing it is to see something that has never been encountered, for which a viewer has no easy notion of its meaning or history, it has an important impact on the mind and soul of those who choose to see. This art, this expression, this otherworld vision is like a pinhole in the fabric of our everyday world.
To encounter something like this, patterns beyond the known, is to encounter stimulus directly connected to fear and wonder. It is to encounter mystery. Fear rises from the threat, the challenge even, if we cannot find a way to fit this pattern into the realm of the known. Wonder blooms as we are entranced, enthralled, and hopefully lifted beyond our insistent personal dominion and exposed to truth and beauty by this unknowable agent.
This has been hard for me to grasp. Only after long exposure can I begin to understand that I am basing my life on a world of predetermined meaning, and missing the mystery of life itself. I'm treating all I experience as something known, and turning my life, my chance at wonder, into a small and closed world of the already decided.
To see them is to experience them, even as I try to classify and name and know them, think them into myself, and place them into what I know. They need meaning like all things need meaning to be understood. And yet it is for seeing that they were created. Seeing of another order altogether from the normal "look and name" that I use everyday. As an interruption to that constant endeavor, I have been made to see the endeavor itself. As creations totally new and original, they have opened me to something far removed from my normal world – they have opened me to living mystery.
I am grateful to be so opened.
Tropisms>