Dara Daniel - Fine Artist
Dara's interest in Art began with drawing as a favorite pass time growing up in Michigan . In High School her interests expanded when she discovered a love for clay and working with her hands. After received an AA degree from Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, Mi. Dara moved to Monterey, Ca , in the early 80's, and attended Monterey Peninsula College, in Monterey, Ca . For two years she studied art there, becoming passionate about figure drawing and submerging herself in pottery as well. From Monterey, Ca Dara moved to Mount Shasta, CA and attended the College of the Siskiyous in Weed, CA for one year. Her focus there was printmaking and photography. After that, while pursuing a Bachelors in Art at Chico State University in Chico,CA, Dara spent most of her time in the sculpture department learning sculpture techniques and exploring the figure in a variety of materials. Eventually sculpture became her emphasis and she continued to sculpt the figure after being accepted to Humboldt State University. Dara received her Masters in Art in 1989. Her graduate show consisted of life-size figurative female sculptures made of Ferro-cement. After graduating the female figure prevailed as her subject matter. Essentially, Dara worked professionally, as a sculptor, with Ferro-cement, Wood and Clay, created indoor/outdoor figurative sculptures for a total of fifteen years.
Today Dara is painting and her medium is Pastel. She says... “ the first time I tried Pastel I was instantly attracted to the inherent qualities of immediacy and directness that Pastel contains. Pastel feels like it is about touch, texture,contrasting surfaces and, not unlike my first love....Drawing.” Along with her medium Dara's subject mattered changed to painting the landscape that surrounds her from her home in Northern California, including water scenes, wildlife and flowers. She works Plein Air and in her studio, finding that doing both helps her to be a better painter. She feels that Plein Air 'keeps her drawing skills sharp, her heart connected to nature and, her mind's eye in touch with the colors of the seasons'. When she works in her studio she often crops digital photos that she has taken and stored using 8 by 10 prints for the initial stages of drawing. This process she says, “helps her find interesting and balanced compositions and design”.
She uses pure white or toned Sanded Pastel Paper often creating under paintings with washes of mineral spirits and Pastel. Dara States that:
“my palette is the landscape that I see and the mood and feeling I want to achieve for the time of season and place I wish to paint'. Once she chooses the surface she uses a charcoal pencil to block out dark and light areas to establish a strong structure. From there she desides her palette, first using a wash then gradually layering dry Pastels of warm and cool colors, from thin to thick, “until the overall rhythm within the painting feels intuitively and soulfully right”. At this stage Dara responds to what is happening before her as each mark influences the next. Throughout her process the most important considerations she feels she has are the tonal values that are necessary to imply perspective and atmosphere, to draw the viewer into the painting.
Dara states: “Working with Pastel is exhilarating, fun, absorbing and, at times, meditative and gentle. Some paintings come together quickly and some are struggles that require coming back to, after a break, to see what it needs. Each painting experience is unique yet, my goal for all my paintings is to capture a degree of Natures passionate, mutable spirit, joy and beauty.”
