Dan Grew up in Central Pennsylvania, near the Susquehanna River ,and always within walking distance of the nearby woods he loved. He was a dreamer who knew his destiny was to be an artist even though he was told repeatedly he had no talent. So with no facility and with no formal art education in sight, Dan hoped to acquire a wide variety of experiences he could ultimately use in his paintings. He tried every job he could get, from digging ditches to selling magazines door to door to being a bell hop in a small town hotel. He was a keen observer of whatever he saw, and he had an ability to remember images; so all of those experiences were added to his visual repetoire. But the job that allowed him to start acquiring the tools he would need to paint, came from designing and building window displays for a small, seven windows and seven stories tall department store in Williamsport.
Then about two years later he was hired to be the display director for one of a chain of department stores in Rochester NY; where he worked for five years. He followed that with with several more years working as a free lance display designer for specialty shops in the area. During those years he cultivated his instinct for two and three dimensional design, and a knowledge of color, but most important, his experiences allowed him to acquire and hone his ability to think originally; and he acquired all of these things because he knew he would be able to use them as a fine artist.
In 1962, Dan left his job to start painting. After about six weeks to get the feel of the oils he expected to use, he applied for a job as an artist for a restaurant equipment company. It worked out well. In fact because of it, he got to do murals in a variety of venues and paintings for bars and restaurants. Soon he was absorbed into the Rochester art community, where he quickly became known for his landscapes, figurative paintings and his portraits. In December of 1970 while he was painting a portrait, his subject told him about the art colony on Jackson Square and urged him to look into it as the artists there were well known for their excellence. So the first week of 1971 he took a bus there, and yes the artists there were as excellent as he had been told, and since Dan loved competition, the better, the better - - he stayed there for the next twelve years.
In 1973, two years after he arrived in New Oerleans, he originated the first painting of the Treehouse collection, a watercolor he titled "The Fisherman's Treehouse."
Over the next years he evolved the concept his paintings would be based on. Since then, until Katrina, he has supported himself by painting pastel portraits while he added more subjects to the Treehouse Collection at every he could set aside.
Although he has made occasional forays to paint portraits in other parts of the country, Dan is a well recognized fixture in the New Orleans art community.
In 2001 he was selected to be the first to have a one man show, and the second to have an artist in residency at the Degas House. Of course Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist was the first. Naturally, the paintings Dan displayed were all from the
Treehouse Collection. He keeps adding more.
