Daniel’s work has long been based on his active engagement with the natural environment. It has been influenced by solitary hikes in the high Sierra and other wild places, traveling miles off marked trails, camping and painting alone, often above ten-thousand feet.

Daniel’s recent work is influenced by his return to the natural landscape of the Northeast after twenty years in California. He will often derive images by “capturing” stills from videos that he has made. This allows him to find surprising compositions and qualities. His “Die Wanderungen” series Daniel combines and overlap images, often improvisatorially. The act of painting is for him much like the walking and seeking he has done in the natural world. Bits of imagery, often rising from deep within his memory circulates through his paintings, allowing him to find harmonies and relationships that reveal beauty and truth. Daniel is interested in paintings that is luminous, in painting that explores the ways in which we see, he sees, and how we/he experiences the world. Paint itself attracts him, its material qualities.

Painting, seeking, and wandering in the wild are all of a piece.

dangottsegen.com