'I grew up on the South Coast in Hampshire with my three brothers and mum and dad. We were encouraged to be creative from a very early age; we invented our own board games and made up our own superheroes and drew comic books.... I was always the kid at school that could draw really well and that was all down to my mum... she always told me that you can never be bored if you can create your own fun. My imagination was my world to roam, and I embraced it’ says Dan.
Observing the figures within Dan’s work here, one could easily mistake him for being a traditional portrait artist. Though, take a longer look and you will begin to see that whilst the figures themselves remain to be marvellous pieces of realistic, mantlepiece style portraiture, the canvases upon which they are sketched are anything but conventional. For be it upon a skateboard, a piece of cardboard or even on the back of a used envelope, there seems no limit to the materials with which Dan will use to create his works. Indeed, it is fair to say that the imaginative spark which was ignited by his mother’s creative enthusiasm during his childhood is still burning just as brightly today.
‘I used to draw so much at school to the frustration of my teachers because it wasn’t just in art class, it was in all classes’ Dan funnily exclaims. ‘A few of my teachers made me a deal that if I paid attention to the class subject for half a lesson then they would allow me to draw for the second half ’. Though whilst Dan was a keen drawer, he soon began during his youth to channel his creative energies elsewhere.
‘I also turned my attention away from art for a while and instead to music. It was for me a creative experience that I could share with others like I used to with my brothers when I was young: writing music, lyrics and arranging original compositions with my band. We did really well and played up and down the U.K and in many festivals but as we all got a bit older and some of us settled down to have families, I ultimately fell back in love with drawing and painting’.
I have painted on pretty much anything you can think of... guitars, skateboards, old woodwork tools...
‘I started off drawing with ballpoint pens at school when I should have been writing an essay or doing maths’ Dan says. ‘I really love the affects you can getwith them; they are like a permanent pencil in the way that you can achieve soft and dark shades. I love using oil paints because of the freedom you have...the blends and colours are so dynamic. I mainly focuson portraits because of the challenge of capturing not only the likeness but also the character of the person. Throughout my life I have drawn on pretty much anything from envelopes and sheet music to fast food wrappers and cardboard boxes. That started at school when I would draw on whatever I could get my hands on. I have painted on pretty much anything you can think of - portraits on guitars, skateboards, and old woodwork tools... I tend to use what I have lying around and try to find a way or making something creative out of it. My artwork is influenced by my passions such as music and film and experimenting with different approaches to the subject’.
To the modern eye, Dan's work might appear environmentally inclined. After all, he repurposes all kinds of used materials, so to interpret Dan’s work as being a form of 'Artivism' (activism through art) might seem at first to be an accurate assumption. Yet he makes no mention of any kind of environmentalism or political interest throughout the duration of our correspondence. Instead, like someone who cannot help but doodle on the nearest scrap of paper, Dan appears to be more focused on acting upon his own creative urges than spreading any sort of serious message. Interestingly, such creative activity is reminiscent of the actions of a rather famous artist, indeed perhaps the most famous of all, from over a century ago.
Below is a segment from a further reading article found here
In the year of 1881, in southern Spain, one baby in particular began to usher his first words. ‘Piz, piz’ the little one cried out. ‘Strange’, his parents may have thought, ‘why are these my child’s first words?’
To those unfamiliar with Spanish, the baby was not rudely informing everyone that he needed to urinate. On the contrary, well according to his mother at least, what he was saying were the words ‘pencil’. Of course, these may have continued to remain a rather strange set of first words if this child were not to become some kind of artist... Yet this child was not only seemingly destined to become just any kind of artist but one of the most renowned creatives of all time. For here was Pablo Picasso.
Throughout his adulthood until his death, Picasso doodled wherever he went, drawing and painting a variety of small, improvised pieces on to whatever materials he could find, much like Dan, from sketchbooks and newspapers to menus and wallpapers.
One thing Picasso did not have to contend with when it came to building his image, however, was the internet, something which is seemingly both a Godsend and a disaster for aspiring artists, as Dan says: ‘social media presence is massive for an artist, it is one of the main outlets for our work to be seen. Though, when my social media was hacked, I ended up being shut out of my own business... it was a nightmare, I had no way to contact my customers or to control what was happening. The hackers tried to take a few hundred pounds from my account through Facebook which I had to then notify the bank and cancel all of my cards which was a major pain. All I can suggest for other artists to do is to regularly change their passwords which I now do each week’.
Since this catastrophic event Dan has nevertheless persevered and has managed to successfully rebuild his social media presence and continue with his unique style, as he says:
‘I wouldn’t say that I have a particular style but that’s just from my point of view, maybe through other peoples’ eyes I do because of the different surfaces I draw on. I like to think that my work is quite diverse and is constantly moving forward or zigzagging up and down like a heart monitor - because a straight line means death, doesn’t it?’
More about Dan:
Winner of the People’s choice Award for his first open exhibition and the judges Best in Show award in his two open exhibitions after that;
Judge of biannual local exhibitions prior to Covid-19;
Awarded The Best community Art Project of the Year in Portsmouth for exhibition highlighting mental health awareness.
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