Daniel Preece at the Blue Ball
Crispy Duck
2020, oil on canvas, 61 x 76cm / 63 x 79cm framed
wooden tray frame painted white
£2,640
Daniel's paintings celebrates the urban environment. Ranging from vast, majestic panoramas to intimate studies of shop fronts and overlooked corners rendered in his unique, vivid colour palette. We are taken on a journey through deserted city streets at day and night - we peer through shop windows one moment and soar above the city the next.
My intention is to encourage the viewer to consider the city differently and I hope lead them to reassess their daily surroundings with a different eye.’
Daniel’s atmospheric paintings, both bleak and beautiful, are devoid of people, a narrative is hinted at and themes of isolation and consumerism recur. Of course each viewer may see the scene differently - a celebration of the city, of colour, perhaps post apocalyptic or an escape. For Dan it is always an opportunity to explore issues of geometry and colour and the boundaries between abstraction and figuration.
‘The best paintings for me show you something you haven’t seen before; it’s about the artist finding a new way of describing something but allowing the viewer to come to some of their own conclusions’
Dan has always made work about the landscape, mainly the urban environment. He observes the world around him and uses drawing as a way of documenting a place and locating himself. The urban landscape provides great opportunities to explore issues of geometry and colour, the boundaries between abstraction and figuration - concerns that fascinate and compel him. ‘The best paintings for me show you something you haven’t seen before; it’s about the artist finding a new way of describing something but allowing the viewer to come to some of their own conclusions’
Dan was initially drawn to the gasometers and tower blocks that populated the area he grew up in around South-West London. ‘In hindsight, they were like urban mountains. Working from these in London gave me the opportunity to easily return to the motif, drawing and painting them directly from observation, then using the images in the studio environment to explore my internal and external responses to these structures. The Gasometers had the same formal elements I was interested in when painting mountains, an ever-changing sense of scale due to light and colour.’
Trained at Chelsea School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal Drawing School.
Awards and residencies include; William Coldstream Prize Slade School of Fine Art, Boise Scholarship to travel and make work in America, Artist in Residence Kensington Palace, Artist in Residence at Level 39, Canary Wharf.
Solo Exhibitions include; London Panoramas, Slade Summer School; ELEVATION the City Re-seen, Gillions Art; Twilight, Canary Wharf Windows Gallery; Landmarks Capsticks, Solicitors, Wimbledon; Olympic Paintings, Canary Wharf Windows Gallery; Intimate Isolation, Project Gallery; Paintings about Everything and Nothing, One Paved Court.
Group Exhibitions include: Assemble Tregony Gallery at After Nyne Gallery, The Lynn Painter Stainers Painting Prize Exhibition; Christmas Show, Browse and Darby; From David Bomberg to Paula Rego: The London Group at Southampton City Art Gallery; I see you here, Project Gallery; Gallery Artists, New York Art Fair, Alicia David Contemporary Art; London Now, Creatives Cities Collection, Barbican Centre; Sarah Myerscough Fine Art; Rebecca Hossack Gallery; Approaches to Landscape, Medici Gallery; Threadneedle Painting Prize, Mall Galleries; Small is Beautiful, Flowers East.
Works owned by numerous public and private collections worldwide including; The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, University College London and Paintings in Hospitals.