Daniel Kaufman
“Melting stick after stick over a surface, dribbling, dripping and pooling, Kaufman allows his encaustic to accrue until it’s stretching across white surfaces like rainbow-colored galaxies-or, even more gloriously, seeping and crystallizing all over the picture plane like molten cloisonné.”
– Peter Frank
Nationally renowned art critic
Daniel Kaufman’s life as a visual artist began over five decades ago when his father gave him a camera for his Bar Mitzvah.
Daniel Studied photography and fine art at Amherst College where he was graduated in 1973. While at Amherst Daniel immersed himself both in the study of Japanese art at Smith College and in photography, attending workshops with Minr White, Paul Caponigro and George Tice among others.
As the first artist in any media to receive a Fulbright Grant, Kaufman spent a year in Ireland photographing “the visual equivalent to the poetry of Yeats”. His award-winning book IRELAND: PRESENCES was published in 1980 by St. Martin’s Press. Daniel’s photographs were exhibited at the International Center of Photography in New York City in 1980.
About thirty-five years ago Kaufman gave up this successful career in photography to devote himself to painting, earning a living by writing non-fiction books and magazine articles, and working as a literary agent. As a photographer, Kaufman felt unsatisfied, as if he were ‘walking on the surface of the ocean of art’. He wanted more from photography than he was able to find.
Cornell Capa, Executive Director of that world-renowned museum, wrote of Kaufman’s photography:
“…The people and atmosphere of this magic land became magic images. This is the kind of work that restores one’s faith in the alchemy of photography. Here is the fusion of mechanical and chemical tools with the spirituality and individuality of vision.”
– Cornell Capa
Apprenticing himself to the internationally-exhibited painter, Max Shertz, Daniel began to appreciate the underpinnings of art and his own consciousness. Whereas photography began on the surface, painting involved transcending the surface and giving expression to the Source of all creativity, what Max calls the Inner Artist. Daniel’s efforts to create art are now concerned with stilling the mind of preconceptions, silencing the ever-dominating ego, and going beyond personal fears to arrive at a completely humbling and liberating art.
In the words Robert Levy, prominent Los Angeles art appraiser and collector:
“Daniel’s work, at once beautiful and challenging to behold…is original and unique, with a jeweler’s delight in detail and a simultaneously macrocosmic effect that makes his best pieces enjoyable from a distance or very close up.
– Robert Levy