Land Between the Lakes

Research and dialogue with art history are central to Daniels’ practice, as they revisit and reshape techniques from the great masters of painting. The elongation of certain figures recalls El Greco, while the delicate black outlines around others evoke Manet. The use of cangiante colors bestows a sacred quality upon seemingly trivial scenes, allowing supernatural light to fall upon the ordinary.

On the shores of Ohio, their native land among lakes, imbued with mysteries and legends, a bittersweet cast of characters and uncanny situations emerges—sometimes autobiographical, sometimes drawn from news or anecdote. All elements mingle: the body and the landscape, the transformation of natural elements and the cycles of life itself.

In Daniels’ work, figures become signs and signifiers, guiding the viewer into an elsewhere where familiar reference points dissolve. They are metamorphs, aware of their own transformation, reflecting the artist’s method: each painting appears to gestate before our eyes, emerging through bursts of orange and violet, through impastos resembling wounds or fragments of flesh.