Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Gerwin.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I became an artist later in life, after first having a career as a Clinical Social Worker in New York City working with homeless people suffering from mental illness. But ever since I was a young boy, I always drew. My drawing continued through high school, college, and finally when I was living in New York I started taking art classes at the City’s incredible institutions: Columbia University, The Studio School, The New York Academy of Art, just to name a few. I started painting, and I began working only part time in order to have a few days in the studio each week. Eventually I went on an artist residency, and then I got an MFA in 2008. Since then I have exhibited my work regularly, taught painting, drawing, and theory, been a resident fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and written about art for a variety of publications including Art forum, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail.
Please tell us about your art.
My paintings are autobiographical abstractions. This may sound like a paradox, but for me, abstraction is driven entirely by personal experience. I am a father, and the primary caretaker for my two boys, age 2 and 5. While they are in school, I am in the studio, and my paintings are driven by the daily realities of fatherhood. Having children has changed my work enormously over the years. My paintings have become more playful, colorful, and lighter in their sensibility. I make shaped paintings in acrylic and oil on wood. My primary drawing tools are a jig saw, table saw, files, and sandpaper. Working on wood allows me to continually alter the shape of my pieces until they come to life. I am not interested in clean geometric forms because they make me think of an idealized world that does not really exist. I find that awkward, off-kilter shapes are more honest reflections of real life. It is not uncommon for me to join several pieces of wood together in order to achieve the painting I am looking for. The paintings’ titles hint at the thoughts and events that gave the works their shape and content.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
Never give up and be committed for the long haul. Artists need to have what the poet John Keats called Negative Capability, the capacity to work within a state of complete uncertainty, not knowing where you are going and not reaching for easy solutions. It seems to me that the best art comes out of an ability to get lost over and over again.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
My paintings can be found online at Artsy, where they are represented by CES Gallery, and at my website, www.danielgerwin.com. I had a show in New York City last summer, and I will have some new works in a group show this summer (2018) at the Klowden Mann gallery in Culver City. Beyond that, I am hopeful that an opportunity will arise to exhibit a full show of my work in Los Angeles in the near future.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.danielgerwin.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: danieljgerwin
Image Credit:
Daniel Gerwin
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