The Art Out There: Daniel Adel

Daniel Adel is a successful illustrator and portraitist in a addition to his work as a fine artist. He also does exquisite watercolors and photography, but here I'm looking at his oil paintings. The Majority of these consist of rumpled up pieces of paper usually white against a dark backdrop, sometimes black against pale. Most of the others are flowing draperies and linens defying gravity in an undefined space. The cresting waves and the locks of Samson's marble hair shown below, are parallel works, displaying his interest in simply defining flowing dynamic forms that are realist and representational on the one hand, but completely abstract in their utility to the artist. It's clear the he is not particularly interested in trying to represent paper and what paper means. It's all form, and light and fluidity and structure. Oddly, for me, drawing a piece of crumpled up piece of paper was one the entry requirements for the art school I attended as a freshman. Mr. Adel has taken a cute little academic exercise and eked out just about all it's possibilities in a mesmerizing fashion.

There's plenty of paper and linen paintings at arcadiafinearts.com and loads more, plus portraits, illustrations, watercolors and photography at his website: www.atelierruebasse.com