Daniel Denton
Daniel Denton is a self-taught, multi-discipline artist who grew up in Woodstock, NY. He moved to Rhode Island in the early nineties and currently lives and works in Portsmouth, RI.
Primarily a sculptor, much of Dan’s current work is characterized by his interest in exploring the artful possibilities of diverse yet common materials. He sees the importance of craft, a need to work with his hands, and an innate drive to create as steady forces that propel his work. Dan’s architectural education from New York Institute of Technology and Boston Architectural Center combined with his years of working in architecture and the trades provide a solid foundation and helped shape his point of view as an artist.
Dan has 27 years of experience in the stone fabrication industry so you could say that stone is his primary medium but his fascination with materials and art-making more broadly provide a constant challenge and inspiration. In the past decade Dan has expanded his view well beyond stone work to a multi-media, multi-discipline approach and he now creates two and three dimensional work in all types of materials. A self-described, “materialist with minimalist tendencies” Dan sees potential for art making in familiar materials. His work speaks through his intuitive use and manipulation of materiality, form, space, context, light, shadow, color, shape, line, and texture with a concentration on the interplay of essence and abstraction. His style is clean, contemporary, almost gestural, without heavy alteration of material(s) and exuberant mark-making. As a result, by using no more of something than is necessary, not only in the quantity of material but also formally in the moves Dan makes in manipulating the material, there is a unique directness and economy in his work. Dan’s finished works often possess a kind of pureness and it’s his hope that the viewer can find the depth in his work that belies the economy.
Dan has a rather curious art-making spirit and he is always creating new work. His list of inspirations is varied and growing as he remains open to the possibility of anything capturing his imagination. He equates his approach to the experience of walking on the beach and collecting shells or small stones to bring home. You don’t pick up every one, just the shells or stones that you are drawn to. Dan believes that fundamentally all art is about mark-making, by putting something there that wasn’t there before, or by taking something away, not blindly but with intention. He believes that the most important job of the artist is to be aware and as he says, “The artist has to see things differently, to look for the relationships, to hear the spaces between the sounds and feel the stillness in the dynamics”. Dan believes that the practice of art making requires an attentiveness to the myriad phenomena that affect our lives in the most profound and subtle ways, and therefore, that the pursuit of Art is never ending.
Dan has work in private collections in California, Miami, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island and has exhibited work in Philadelphia, PA, Providence, RI, Boston, MA, Newport, RI, Wellfleet, MA, and now Kingston, NY.