A highlight of my curation of the Denver Art Showcase: Daniel Sprick unveiled a new painting

In Denver, Daniel Sprick is represented by Gallery 1261, which released a new Sprick landscape for the Denver Art Showcase. To read the article, click here.

Curating the Art & Object Denver Art Showcase caused me to realize what a connected art web I have in Denver after more than three decades of reporting on the art scene — visual and musical — in the Mile High City. When my longtime publisher, Art & Object, recruited me to curate the Denver Art Showcase, the first artist that sprang to mind was Daniel Sprick. I told my publishers, based in Chapel Hill, NC, “We must, must, must, must, must have Dan Sprick in our showcase. He is the best in Denver.”

Dan is one of the most accomplished painters working in realism anywhere today, truth told. I’ve had the good fortune to interview the artist a number of times for articles over the years.

When I told Dan about curating the Denver Art Showcase, I said, “I must, must, must, must, must get you in my show,”

And so we conducted another interview, the basis of this article, linked with no pay-wall or pop-up advertisements.

Here’s another work by Daniel Sprick, “Dreaming Venus,” on exhibit and for sale in the booth of Gallery 1261 at the Denver Art Showcase online August 1-7, 2022. To visit our arm-chair art fair with dozens of Denver’s best artists, click here.

“Dreaming Venus” by Daniel Sprick is on exhibit and for sale in the Gallery 1261 booth of the Denver Art Showcase. Click here to link to the Denver Art Showcase.

Why Realism remains relevant in art

One of the most in-depth art article I wrote this year was just published by Art & Object. The topic was realism, and the work brought the pleasures of delving into mind-bogglingly realistic representational art.

Read my feature at this link with no annoying paywall or advertisements.

“Six Butterflies” by Scott Fraser, who paints in a realistic or surrealistic style.

“Silverware” by Don Eddy, who prefers the phrase “representational art” to the term “realism.”

When my editor assigned this feature to me, I knew we were dealing with a broad topic in answering his question: “Is Realism relevant in the 21st century?” A big question.

I included three master painters in the Realism style, a veteran gallerist in New York City and a renowned art historian in my feature for Art & Object.

A still-life painting by Daniel Sprick

Sprick also paints the human figure and landscapes, as the image below, titled “Wake From Dream,” shows. For more about Daniel Sprick, click here for my recent feature published by The Denver Gazette with no paywall.

“Wake From Dream” by Daniel Sprick demonstrates his mastery of painting both the human figure and landscapes in the style of realism.

Despite the art world’s shenanigans such as shredded paintings and NFTs and software that replicates watercolors and AI that creates “art,” Realism really is relevant. In the digital era, the sign of the human hand matters, and representational art continues to delivery something other than even fine art photography can present.

Read my feature here with no paywall or annoying advertisements.

Daniel Sprick’s Realism is unreal

Daniel Sprick will exhibit his “Interiors” at Gerald Peters Gallery in New York City.

Daniel Sprick has given much of his life to painting, and his hyper-realistic art evidences the results of a man with not only talent, but also devotion. Along with being an exceptionally gifted painter, Sprick is articulate. Recently, we spoke of beauty, the smoke and mirrors of the art world, and aging.

On Christmas Day 2021, The Denver Gazette published my feature about the artist, linked here.

For the article, I also interviewed Sprick’s peer, another Colorado realist, Scott Fraser. I interviewed one of Colorado’s leading art collectors, John Madden. And I also interviewed Timothy Standring, Denver Art Museum painting curator emeritus. Everybody who casts a gaze toward a Sprick painting can see perfectly well that he is a master among us.

Sprick distinguishes himself via his versatility. He paints the human figure and portraits, still-life works, landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes, as well as still-life works.

To read the article, click here.

Daniel Sprick painted his own interiors during quarantine

Daniel Sprick did not let COVID-19 self-quarantine quell his creativity. Instead, he took work-at-home to new heights, painting a luminous series of interiors from his high-rise apartment in Denver. For Sprick, , self-quarantine was a time of new perspectives and an elevated awareness of the comforts of home.

When during some of the darkest days of the virus, Dan sent me images of his new paintings, I knew I wanted to write about the work. The publisher of Western Art & Architecture was immediately interested, and my feature titled “Captured Beauty” appears in the October/November issue of the magazine.

The artist spoke about skulls as subject matter, social justice issues and why his bedsheets hanging in his living room were depicted in one of his new paintings. And he spoke about his process:

“What I do consciously is composing and placing intervals and voids and objects in a harmonious, rhythmic way or with slightly irregular harmonies that I hope will evoke some feeling in the viewer. They don’t need to know why. If we’re not musicians, we don’t reverse- engineer songs to know how they’re causing us feelings. Either you feel something or you don’t,” said Sprick.

He worked with a limited palette of mostly earth tones — umbers and siennas and whites. White walls, Sprick explained, display the nature of the planet’s light and the human eye. 

 “There’s something that happens when you look at interiors with a blue sky, like today, the world inverts. The blue of the sky is at the bottom and the warmth of the earth—the green and brown—is coming up to the top of the wall. It’s how the light off the planet works. It inverts like a camera: The blue sky is above, but at the bottom of the room. The green or brown at the bottom bounces to the top.”

At the bottom of several paintings in the series, Sprick painstakingly painted the woodgrain of his apartment’s floors — an almost impossible feat. The paintings provide a look at the artist’s personal space, as well as a glimpse into Sprick’s head space during pandemic.