Dan Cole is an artist who is known for his sketches and paintings of wild birds and is a full member of the Society of Wildlife Artists. When viewing collections of his studies of birds there is little wonder why this it is that, through them, he has become so well known as an illustrator.

 

However, Dan’s painting is so much more than this; he creates a ‘woven’ ground of marks and colour that compliments his literal subject matter; the birds are placed within grounds that set them off and these abstracted environments are as engaging as the main subject.

 

He has travelled widely in South America, Australia and New Zealand and it is within these vast, dramatic landscapes that Dan developed his unique way of painting landscapes; these vast lands, beaches and seascapes with sweeping perspective. There are layers of rock depicted; scree slopes with falling boulders;  geological cross-sections of cliff faces revealing layers and strata.

In addition to this, Dan utilises a unique colour palette where abstract elements evolve; colours vibrating on edges of clearly drawn illustrative lines.

 

Dan’s paintings are brave and dramatic and he treads the line between illustration and expressionist landscape very successfully.

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Dan works in his studio by the river in Truro and his subject matter is often the nearby coast on The Roseland.