Daniel Green is a professional artist currently living and working in the small northern French town of Aire-sur-la-Lys, in the Pas-de-Calais Département. The move to a relatively rural area of France has coincided with an awareness of the great variety evident in the landscape and in nature. While not turning his back on other genres he loves, his numerous forays into the surrounding countryside has led to an increasing interest in exploring the possibilities of depicting the beauty he sees in dead and decaying nature, treating these subjects in a realistic contemporary way. Isolated from their natural environment, yes, but only in order that the viewer can focus on “it” as a thing of beauty in itself.
Born in Bristol, in 1958, Daniel spent most of his life in Kent, after moving there as a child, before 9 years ago making a complete change and moving to France. Painting and drawing from an early age, an artistic career beckoned, however fate and “life” intervened, and it was only in his late 30’s that he was eventually able to pursue the artistic career he had always wanted.
Completing a BA (Hons) degree in the History of Art at University College, London on leaving school, he shortly thereafter joined Kent Police where he spent the next 13 years, which may seem a strange choice for someone wanting to follow the artistic path, but this is another story!
Daniel was able to finally undertake and complete a BA (Hons) Fine Art degree (at the Kent Institute of Art & Design at Canterbury) in the 1990’s. Despite the relatively late start, he is convinced that those past experiences have worked their way through into his approach to his artistic practice, and informed it. The History of Art degree in particular awakened an interest in the “how”, the craft of painting, if you will, and he has over the last 20 years researched extensively old painting and drawing treatises which has led to his now grinding pigments to make his own paint, combine varnishes and solvents to make his own painting mediums, and to prepare his own surfaces for painting on.
Since completing his Fine Art Degree in 1999, Daniel has with his partner and now wife, run Novus Studio art classes in Wateringbury, near Maidstone, Kent, which have been maintained despite the move to France, imparting his skills and enthusiasm for art to both adults and children.
Daniel has exhibited widely in the UK and has work in collections around the UK, as well as in the USA, Canada and Australia.