I grew up in the St. Louis area during the 50's and 60's, I was drafted into the army in 1970 where I met my wife, Donna in Philadelphia a year later. Donna took notice of my casual interest in art and encouraged me to continue. This was important in my decision to pursue training at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1973-77. After finishing there, we moved to Sullivan County where we built our home and life in the pristine woods. My art and landscapes that I have created were produced out of the richness of my life with my family here in NE PA.
I paint because I wish to seek inside myself for self-discovery and connecting. I view my efforts creating images as a sensitizing process that promotes the possibility for elevating and transforming my spiritual being. I feel that the art forms created are not the end product. They can become beautiful symbols that traces the path of self-realization and spiritual rebirth. The arts possess the appeal of stimulation and entertainment. In our present time they need to be utilized for elevating and evolving our society. Many people remain spiritually undernourished and disconnected with nature and our creator. I feel that the end product in art is best reflected by transformation in the life of an artist; to what degree they are able to spread the message of spiritualism into increasing numbers of receptive souls.
Through Nature I attempt to absorb the purity and dynamics of the creation.
We are absorbed now with all of our "gadgets and improvements" so I appeal to become true to the heart. This would let our compassion provide a genuinely noble effort, saving humanity, integrity and a sense of harmonious living in tune with the mother earth. This is a moral issue of choice, for our children's future, between living, existing or dying. There finally is growing awareness about environmental concerns that scientists have been emphasizing for a number of years. I sense a strong collective interest and we must insist on an American movement by prioritizing and innovating the needed changes. We can set the example for the entire world.
The arts are a key component to educational development.
My work with students is evidence of an important sharing process that I use in combination with my own production of images. I hope to continue to influence the expansion of arts for all of our children. We should apply and integrate arts in a variety of forms in to the education process. We are all born with an artist that dwells within, and educators need to nurture this in each child. Then they can access inspiration, built-in wisdom, individual insights and sensitivity. This should be a basic expectation for human development. We should apply and integrate the arts into the mainstream of our lives and into our methods that define how we function. In nature we experience a model of perfection for harmony and balance; this is often emulated and translated through the beautiful harmonious elements which surface in art.
We can capture these dynamics and integrate them into our systems with fresh optimism, a new generation and the connection of creative thinkers. Through a reordering of priorities (putting ethics and morality in charge) we could use the wisdom of Einstein's perception, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." We need to imagine living in harmony with our natural system and begin to create ideas that will elevate our systems and use of technology. Let's fight the war on ignorance! Begin with all of our children at early ages to help get them connected with their innate wisdom and limitless capacities.
Through the arts I have been able redirect sometimes aggressive and indifferent youth towards productive changes in attitude. We need to utilize the arts to change the spiritual polarity from negative to positive. The power of the arts is clearly effective at disarming hostility and aggressive negative means for solving problems. How can we transfer this application more widely for our common good? As we continue to fight amongst one another globally, we distract ourselves and defer resources to supply help. Would it not show a mark of progress if we could set the example by implementing a non-violent method of resolving differences? I would like to encourage artistic insight for an internationally connected community to promoting peace and production instead of war, hatred and destruction. Isn't this the best message that Americans could promote? We could be the example, raise the bar, and achieve peaceful living through quality, integrity, productivity and independence. Just imagine.
My work in Job Corps resembles an on-going artist-in-residence
The connection with the students has given me a valuable experience as a teaching artist. To my surprise, exhibit opportunities that I have shared with students have led to high profile venues like the UN in NY City, Durban S. Africa and the Russell Rotunda in Washington DC. Students and I were connected to the International exhibit called "Breaking the Walls of Bias, Prejudice and Stigma." Coordinated by Marietta Dantonio-Fryer, Chairperson from the Art Dept. at Cheney University, Outreach Coordinator of the Survivors Art Foundation and sponsor of the UN events. She shared how grateful she was for the help supplied by Red Rock students under my direction saying, "I have worked with Dan before. The talent of his students and the depth of emotion in their work is astounding."
I provided the statement below that accompanied my silk banner for the exhibit in 2001 entitled, "Spiritual Poverty."
"SPIRITUAL POVERTY"
The caterpillar is a symbol for our awkward, slow spiritual habits, materialism and mass-consumerism in our finite earthly home. The chrysalis symbolizes hope for a spiritual transformation. The hands holding the earth symbolize differing races sharing our earthly home. The religious icons show our differing views and interpretations of the same creator. The butterfly resting on the creator's hand symbolizes our spiritual awakening and refinement. Society remains in the caterpillar stage of development and needs the spiritual transformation to reach a new definition for progress and well being.
Our emphasis on materialism reflects our spiritual poverty. Our actions show how our priorities reflect disconnection with nature and the creator. It requires mindlessness and emptiness to continue to lay spoils to the world that we will pass onto our children.
As an artist I attempt to view the scene with the awe and freshness of a child. I see the infinite complexity and beauty in nature as contrasted with the mechanical and indifferent geometry that man has fabricated.
Man acts as an intruder in the ornate natural world with our technological advances that trifle in comparison to our creator's work. Our arrogance will lead us further into discord and futility, but our humbleness will lead us toward harmony and progress. As pessimists, we are already doomed by the lack of faith in human capacity. As optimists we will take steps forward to seek the miracle of a spiritual awakening and metamorphosis.
The closer I see nature through art, the more I can appreciate how Native Americans showed reverence and respect for our natural world.
We have left scars, after displacing their culture in the name of expansion and "progress". We can re-define progress now if we want or wait until the urgency defines it for us.
I have no Native American ancestry that I know of, however, I can adopt them as spiritual brothers. Where can I find a leader in our world today that would relate a message like this?
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but the thread of it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. Whatever befalls the earth befalls also the children of the earth."
(Chief Seattle's address to President Franklin Pierce, 1855)
Dan Curry, 2001
