Remember Children,
Mind and Body
Charcoal
on paper; 2001
Richard L. Dana is a self-taught artist who has exhibited extensively
in the United States and internationally for the past nineteen years.
His work has appeared in 18 one-person and over 60 group exhibitions.
Selected exhibitions in the United States include the Corcoran Gallery
of Art, the Chrysler Museum, the Octagon House Museum, the Drawing Center,
the International Monetary Fund, Maryland Art Place, the Washington Project
for the Arts, and the Troyer, Fitzpatrick, Lassman Gallery
Internationally Mr. Dana has exhibited in Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Russia, Senegal, Taiwan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Mr. Dana concentrates principally on mixed media painting and drawing, although he also has been moving into installation territory recently.
The artist's work ranges rather far and wide, from very small to very large, from abstract to representational, from black and white to intensely colorful. In creating a specific series of work Mr. Dana addresses one or more of three formal concerns: The combination of abstract and representational imagery; Narrative structures (or different ways to tell a visual story), and: Nonrepresentational narration ( in part, a synthesis of the two other concerns).
In the larger sense, thematically, Mr. Dana's art is an inquiry into dualities: Emotion and reason; Spirit and flesh; Spontaneity and order, and; The abstract and the concrete. In identifying these black and white poles, he is particularly interested in the more colorful gray regions in between, where humans actually live. Following from this, the artist's work also deals with the individual's place in the world, either macrocosmically or microcosmically, most often through depiction of or allusion to a mental or emotional state.
Mr. Dana received an undergraduate degree in Russian Studies from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975 and a master's degree
in International Relations from Johns Hopkin's School of Advanced International
Studies in 1977. He worked as an economist and Soviet Affairs expert in
Washington, D.C. from 1977 to 1984. Having spent much of his free time
painting since preparatory school, he decided in 1984 to turn this increasingly
passionate pastime into a full-time career and
has been creating art ever since.
