Daniel Mcwilliams

Much, if not all, of my work is devoted to both the past and the present, to both high and low culture, and to moving beyond such paradoxes. All my paintings are immersed in what I feel are the primal springs of art itself — the blend of emotion and physical motion that is inherent in the process. I hope that the viewers of my canvases will have a clear feeling for the physical body incorporated in all my efforts.

At the age of 14, my early drawings and landscape sketches were already beginning to sell in my hometown of Carmel, California. My formal art studies began soon thereafter, and eventually took me to the Pacific Northwest, where I participated in student shows in Portland and Seattle. Settling in Oregon, I studied art under Bruce St. Claire, winning two Scholastic Art Awards and a summer studies scholarship from the Portland Art Museum to study with Louie Bunce. My work was chosen as part of a representational group of paintings reflecting the talents of Northwest student art for the international Ship of Hope tour and exhibition.

By the time I was in college, I was selling paintings at regional exhibitions and out of my small attic apartment. By sophomore year, the Spanish side of my heritage was calling to me, and I moved to southern Spain, studying art at the Universidad de Sevilla, with studio classes at both the Museo de Bellas Artes and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Barcelona. There I learned from several fine professors including neo-cubists, portrait artists and expressionists, taking greatest influence from the works of Domenico Teotocopulo, Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, Lalazquez, Joaquin Sorolla and Picasso.