Harvey Daniels

'My work is primarily celebratory... I want a sense of excitement and happiness in my work, and seek this through unusual and surprising juxtapositions of shape, colour and line, juxtapositions that don't necessarily follow an obvious logic. I enjoy putting colours together that are not too easy to assimilate and that give a frisson when seen next to one another. This is not a theoretical or even an intellectual decision, but has to do with an intuitive feeling of what the painting needs, which of course evolves as I work.

Wit and humour are important aspects of my work. Most of the paintings I enjoy are both witty and joyful, for instance the paintings of Matisse, Miró and Stuart Davis. And, for me, my work has to have an emotional charge, a poetry, even though my art is non-figurative and geometric.

- Harvey Daniels, 2010

Harvey Daniels (1936-2013)

Harvey Daniels studied at Willesden School of Art (1951-56), the Slade (1956-58) and Brighton College of Art (1958-59). In 1963 Harvey returned to Brighton College, initially as a printmaking technician and from 1970 as Principal Lecturer in Printmaking, running the Printmaking department until his retirement in 1988.

A founding member of the Printmakers Council, Harvey also remained an exhibiting member of the London Group throughout his life. His first solo show was held in New York in 1963, and during his lifetime he had over 56 solo exhibitions. Harvey’s work is included in many prestigious public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

'The most obvious quality of Harvey Daniels's paintings is their brilliance. The most brilliant quality of his paintings is their obviousness... There is a variety of tone and action in Daniels’s images. They are far from bland, and familiarity with them brings an enhanced sense of visual drama. Up front though it all is, there are harsh tones as well as sweet, elbows as well as caresses. They are polished but far from polite. The modern, urban motifs disport themselves with rustic or primitive vigour... The message of it all is the optimistic one of "community, freedom, equality and abundance”.’

- Professor Norbert Lynton, 1987