Daniel Pailes-Friedman
Daniel Pailes-Friedman was born in 1961 in New York City where he has lived most of his life and currently resides. From an early age, he became interested in visual arts in the form of comics and graffiti. He went on to formally study drawing and painting at Pratt Institute in the early 1980s and later at the Art Students League throughout the 1990s. Daniel has exhibited extensively over the years throughout the United States. He believes art is a very personal experience through which he is creating a visual language that tells the story of his life. “Color has been perhaps my favorite tool to accomplish this. Color has the unique ability to express emotions and thoughts. My work can oscillate between an influence of nature in the form of skies and landscapes and geometry in the form of grids, alphanumeric characters, and simple shapes.” Some of the important artistic inspirations for Daniel are Vasily Kandinsky, Claude Monet, and Mark Rothko.
Artist Statement
Painting is a meditative process. It begins with preparing a canvas and ends when there is nothing left to resolve. A composition starts with a series of lines created by suppressing conscious control. It is fast and spontaneous, like automatic drawing. In just a few minutes the entire composition is laid out.
Once that is complete, there is a transition to a deliberate workflow. Areas of color are meticulously applied defining the composition and are added slowly and with a studied patience allowing the painting to evolve. A few highly saturated colors are applied first and create the focal point of the painting. Layered on top of that are areas of highly diluted colors that fall into a palette of near whites. Together they work to create depth and movement.
Negative space is critical. Implied transparencies emerge with the juxtaposition and intersection of the colored shapes. Some paintings come quickly. Some take months. Each piece leads to the next.
