MIKE: As usual, when wandering round an exhibition, I was searching for suitable words to describe the items to pop into my head.
Hardly had I thought of the drab and cliched "different", "unusual", when I bumped into my jovial editor, Paul Brooks. Looking at one of Dan Mills' canvases, Paul remarked, "His work has substance". Exactly what I was struggling to say! To me, "substance" implies weight, solidity, something grounded and meaningful. There you have it! Dan's work encapsulated in a simple, straightforward word, but which holds much wider connotations.
The Footprint of a Working Artist consists of several large mixed media works, which dominate Gallery 2 at Space. They really draw you in, with their vital, flagrant colours and teasing designs. And the personal back story to each was so interesting. A Treatment for Sciatica represents exactly that, as Dan slowly worked his way through a painful bout of that condition via a steady concentration on this painting. Clearly therapeutic.
Another reason I took to Dan's work was his artist's statement, which I actually found quite intelligible — such a change from the obscure verbiage employed by the majority of his peers. In it he describes his art as "emotional and intuitive, rather than intellectual or pre-conceived". His first step on a canvas is instinctive, unconscious, then it gradually develops a more solid definition as the rational side of the artist comes into play. He has several pieces on the go at any one time, with drop sheets often turning into paintings!
After spending time abroad, Dan has been settled in Whanganui for the past six years, with his Czech-born wife and three young daughters. 3 of 5 provides a good example of his work as a travelling artist. The canvas was folded for ease of packing, producing creases and margins which became an integral part of the work. It was primed in Whanganui, used for sketches at St Ives, in Cornwall, stretched and roughly painted on in the Czech Republic, then completed in our fair city. An international painting by any standards!
As a digression — hopefully, entertaining! — may I leap on the mention of St Ives? Born in Devon, Dan would often spend family holidays at St Ives, to where he returned in order to work on 3 of 5. I recently read a short biography, by Sebastian Faulks, of an English painter, Christopher Wood, who spent some time at the artists' colony there in the 1920s. I immediately checked to see whether he would have known Edith Collier, but, alas, she had left there in 1921, five years prior to his arrival. Although Dan's artistic travels took him there almost a century later, I still find the connection with our most famous artist quite appealing. Coincidences of this nature always grab me.
