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Daniel Berlin received double B.S. degrees in both Painting and Psychology from Illinois State University and a MFA degree in Fine Arts (Painting) from the University of Colorado. He is primarily a painter as well as an avid practitioner of monotyping. He works and lives with his family in the Hudson Valley (Accord, NY). |
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Interview with the artist in April 2020 during Covid-19
BAU: What are you working on during the Quarantine?
D.B.: I’m continuing to work and develop a new direction, with a “figurative” aspect, away from my decades long non-representational approach.
BAU: Where did this figurative element come from?
D.B.: It seems like it arose from a continuing interest in questions on self, on the experience
of egolessness, and on the nature of mind. Haha, fun stuff!
Here’s a short, related statement of sorts, adapted from Dogen Zenji :
To embody Awake is to study the Self.
To study the Self is to look directly at the Self. To look directly at Self is to dissolve the Self.
To dissolve the Self is to be energized by immeasurable things.
When energized by countless things, fixation on Self & Other melts away.
No trace of the ambitious Awake remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.
BAU: How has the Quarantine affected your practice?
D.B.: It has certainly deepened my connection, both to my art and to my meditation practice.
It has provoked a fresh look into our situation, into this existence, examining assumptions and habitual patterns.
We’ll see where it leads!
BAU: What music are you listening to?
D.B.: In the studio I’ve been listening over & over to Miles Davis’s “Bitches Brew”.
It is such a remarkable album, an inspired and important moment in jazz history.
BAU: What are you craving?
D.B.: non-craving,and some cookies.