Dan Parry Jones

Overview

Example of 'tray frame' style

Dan Parry-Jones' recent work is truly mixed media in its construction. Using a palette knife to create textured, semi-abstracted backgrounds, the artist then creates even more texture by scratching into the resulting surface.

The foreground details tend to be more graphic, employing both illustrative and screen printing techniques, and it is this contrast between rough, original surface and repeatable detail that have sparked comparisons with street artists such as Banksy.

Biography

Trips to the mountains of southern Spain and the French Alps and Dan's love of the American landscape are the inspiration for his current body of work. In his paintings he explores his fascination with the relationship between nature and the man-made, juxtaposing panoramic mountain ranges and palm trees with still pools, modernist buildings and brightly painted walls. This is echoed in the contrast between the flat, representational screen-printed elements and the textured painted surface.

Pastel and acid colours jostle in sunshine-drenched semi-abstract landscapes with LA vibes. Other pieces feature petrol blue night skies with dashes of vibrant underpainting left visible, like colourful stars. Dan constantly experiments, not least through colour, to push himself out of his comfort zone and explore different moods. "It is the struggle between adhering to a plan and allowing the automated side of the brain to take over and create something else that results in my strongest work," he says.

Dan draws influence from Richard Diebenkorn and Robert Rauschenberg, setting shapes of flat colour against textured areas of paint and glued paper (fragments of typography or colour). He applies acrylic with bold gestures, layering and stripping it back as he goes, which results in stunning impastoed paintings.

The artist works from his own photographs to make the screen-printed elements such as figures, cars, architecture and mountains. When he has taken a photo he is particularly happy with, he often experiments with it in a series of paintings, giving each its own unique background, palette and mood.

Dan's work is widely exhibited and very well received at major art fairs and gallery shows in Europe, Asia and the USA, including solo exhibitions at Adam Gallery in Bath in 2017 and 2021, and group shows at Josie Eastwood Fine Art (annual summer and winter group shows since 2012) and Will's Art Warehouse in London. One of Dan's paintings was selected for the Royal West of England Academy's Annual Open Exhibition in 2019.

Exhibitions