original
paintings by
Daniel Stuelpnagel
photograph by Kenji Mori
artist Daniel Stuelpnagel - biographical information
Daniel Stuelpnagel has been painting since 1985, after studying under Herb Jackson at Davidson College in North Carolina. The artist pursued studio work with Dan Dudrow at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland in continuing studies between 1991 and 1993.
In addition to a 2001 painting trip to Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, the artist spent two years in northern California, where his work is represented by the Exploding Head Gallery in Sacramento. Stuelpnagel's first solo exhibition in Washington, DC opened at Parish Gallery, Georgetown, in January, 2003. Before embarking on a full-time art career, he worked as a stock-broker and branch manager for T. Rowe Price mutual funds in Baltimore and Washington, with an emphasis on technology, financial markets and organizational dynamics.
The artist began painting seascapes in 1992, and developed his unique geometric abstractions beginning in 1995, completing his first series for exhibition in 1998. He has participated in more than 50 exhibitions in the past nine years. Recent travels include a 2003 visit to Barcelona, Spain and a trip to northern Italy in 2005. After spending two months on the island of Maui in the spring of 2006, Stuelpnagel returned to Lahaina for his September exhibition of Maui landscapes at Sargent's Fine Art.
His latest work in abstract landscape paintings represents a fusion of the geometric and seascape compositions, emphasizing the subtle geometry emergent in nature to reveal the properties of earth, sea and sky. The artist has donated paintings to assist in fund-raising for organizations concerned with children's arts education and literacy, housing for the disabled, public television, cancer treatment research and hospice care for terminal AIDS patients.
Stuelpnagel is based in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, where he has studios at the Broom Factory in Canton and LO A D OF FU N studios in the Station North Arts District.
In 1998 and ’99, he lived and worked in Washington, DC, and exhibited art work at local venues including the second ArtOMatic group show, and the Adams-Morgan Festival, where he received a jury award for Best Abstract Painting. At this time, his work came to the attention of juror Norman Parish, owner of Parish Gallery at Canal Square in Georgetown. Stuelpnagel began selling paintings to a growing list of supportive local collectors, friend and family.
After accepting a solo exhibition at Parish Gallery scheduled for 2003, the artist left Washington in mid-2001 for California, visiting the Burning Man festival in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, and continuing on to Sacramento, where he lived for a year, and obtained representation and a four-person exhibition with the Exploding Head Gallery. At this time, he established a level of studio work, interspersed with travel, consisting of a prolific output of thirty to forty paintings a year.
In early 2002, Stuelpnagel collaborated with the Illumiere performance art group in San Francisco for a series of special events at Café du Nord, and acted as art director for the visual art component, also starting an ongoing collaboration with producers Miche Hall and Tim Wooster, who have since relocated to New York and run their own performance and theater-promotion company.
This followed a November, 2001, painting trip for five weeks in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, which exerted a powerful influence on the artist’s work and marked the beginning of a multi-year period of intermittent and extended travel experiences linked to the studio and the process of painting and creative development. Stuelpnagel also participated in five group exhibitions in San Francisco between September, 2001 and June, 2002, meeting artists and exploring local galleries and alternative venues, gaining familiarity with Hunters Point studios and the Open Studios model.
He returned to Washington, DC in the fall of 2002 and established his painting space at the Mount Pleasant Artists’ Studios, in preparation for the exhibition at Parish Gallery, painting a series of thirty pieces on canvas, with the objective of combining the organic and geometric elements of the ongoing seascapes and grid-based geometric abstractions. Fifteen of these paintings were included in the solo show which opened in January of 2003.
Stuelpnagel lived in Barcelona, Spain for two months in the spring of 2003, which was influential in establishing an interest in European architecture, studio work processes and aspirations for aesthetic durability, as well as an ongoing study of the language, continuing exposure to theatrical aesthetics and concepts, and an appreciation for the direct effect of the travel experience on the artist’s work. Additional specific influences included contemporary gallery and museum shows of paintings, conceptual installations, and sound art.
It was during this trip that he began developing a series of mixed media works on paper, using pen, ink, pencil and watercolor to create map-like images, theatrical stage sets based on observed architectural elements, and other fanciful and painterly surrealistic small works. In late 2003, the artist returned to live for a year in San Francisco’s Mission district, where he shared accommodations with a group of artists including film students, dancers, visual artists and industrial designers, expanded his venues in San Francisco to include the grassroots of the Spanish-speaking population in the Mission, and especially developed an interest in collaborative group exhibitions, international art, documentary digital video film-making, and a broadening sense of artistic possibilities beyond painting.
More regional travel in California enabled Stuelpnagel to visit and experience several aspects of Native American culture and ceremonial dance, and to meet and talk to people from a wide variety of cultures. The diversity of San Francisco also facilitated a continuation of his interest in philosophy and aesthetics.
Throughout these experiences, the artist has continued to develop an ongoing series of geometric abstractions which characterize numerous aspects of global culture in the new millennium, including technology and data-based networks in the human realm, as well as large scale infrastructure in its pervasive and growing framework, and the fractal dualism of geometric structures within organic elements, geometric duality as a means of translating among dimensions in quantum chromodynamics, and other science-related areas of interest.
In repeated trips back to the east coast, the artist received an invitation to design a collection of his paintings on commission for the law offices of Funk & Bolton in downtown Baltimore. He returned to Baltimore in late summer of 2004, and established a studio at the Broom Factory, near Baltimore harbor, in a space shared with mosaic artist Cinder Hypki.
After several months designing a collection of ten paintings which included existing studio pieces alongside new works done on commission for the space, Stuelpnagel installed a framed body of work comprised of three geometric abstractions and seven seascapes. Partners Bryan Bolton and David Funk purchased the collection, making it the artist’s largest sale up to that time.
Stuelpnagel departed to spend two months in Bologna, Italy, visiting with a group of musicians and students, beginning to learn the Italian language and culture, and doing research on the commedia dell’ arte tradition and theatrical stage sets to continue his small works on paper. Winter travels included first visits to Rome, Venice, Ravenna, the Cinque Terre coast and other locations which inspired a developing vision of historical integration, an expanded color palette, and the irresistible influence of Italian Renaissance painters and medieval architectural elements, as well as the growing force of musical influences.
2005 saw the output of a unique series of abstract landscapes, inspired by Italy, emerging from the studio, leading up to a solo exhibition in September, 2005, entitled View Source, at the Pennsylvania State University’s Mont Alto library. The artist found the travel experience a catalyst for the development of new techniques integrating existing conceptual challenges, building landscapes on a foundation of abstract geometry, reintroducing extensive palette knife work, and continuing with the sweeping renditions of sea and sky developed in a relentless series of more than fifty seascapes created during 2003.
The subtle beauty and compelling composition of these mountain landscapes became a new point of departure, and led to acquisitions by a number of existing and new collectors, including the addition of two distinctive pieces to the Funk & Bolton collection in Baltimore.
After assembling and participating in gallery exhibitions of his own work and curating group shows at two Baltimore galleries in early 2006, Stuelpnagel visited the island of Maui, staying for seven weeks on the northwest slope of the Haleakala volcano, where he created several new series of works on canvas and on paper, both expanding on earlier developments. Invited to exhibit at Sargent’s Fine Art in Lahaina in September, the artist pursued a series of eight paintings on canvas inspired by travels around the island and the bird’s-eye views conveyed by being at an elevation in the hills, with a view of numerous distinctive coastlines and the unique compositions of land, sea and sky.
Also continuing the mixed media maps, which consist of watercolor and inks on paper with the familiar compass rose and various abstract elements, the artist carries his studio wherever he goes, and gives himself and his creative energy to the expanding experience of travel and relocation, to explore the world’s natural and inspiring beauty, and the human fascination with geometric frameworks as our means of structuring perception.
Now with more than two hundred collectors worldwide, and gallery exhibitions scheduled for the years ahead, Stuelpnagel recently completed a second collection for the new offices of Funk & Bolton in Philadelphia; fourteen paintings on canvas, equal numbers from the studio and on commission, including a nine by six foot canvas of an expanded mixed media map collage [a concept which emerged from the hand-painted watercolors, was composed from scanned paper pieces in the digital realm of PhotoShop, and then returned to the physical studio in the form of a painstaking drawing eighteen times larger than the original postcard for which the image was designed].
This collection purchased and installed on the 46th floor of the fifty-story Bell Atlantic Tower in Philadelphia opened in late 2006, representing an expanded commitment by Funk & Bolton, Stuelpnagel’s largest collector with a total of twenty-six paintings on canvas.
Daniel Stuelpnagel is featured as the twelve-page cover story in volume five of the bilingual Japanese art magazine BIFROST, published quarterly in February of 2007, including more than twenty-five photographs of his studio and art work (photographs by New York photographer Kenji Mori, interview by Baltimore art dealer Ann Priftis, and article by Japanese curator Momo Takanashi).
Upcoming exhibitions include the (sometimes) biennial ArtOMatic, in and around Washington, DC.
