Artist's Statement
Daniel Prendergast
Lives & works in Phoenix, AZ
The through line of my work is an examination of the mysteries of time and change; primarily through our relationship with nature in Garden Paintings and Drawings, The Garden Photos, The Mary Photos and then with random imagery in The Abstract Paintings.
The cycles of nature are an on-going fascination for me and a springboard for my garden centered work. The garden seems both a still, peaceful place and the site of swirling, roiling conflict. There is expectation. Birth and death are in their perpetual dance and something like plant consciousness is poised to assert itself while stone and plaster figures stand witness.
I often begin my abstract work with the discarded canvases of random hobbyist painters. I add to the existing marks, allowing enough of the past through to show the changes necessary to get to the present resolution, a metaphor for the effects of time on materiality. A blank canvas likewise begins with the application of unplanned marks as I contemplate a theme. From there, the randomness is wrestled into organization through both addition and obliteration of the formal elements.