John Rank Gallery

Since studying film Daniel Freaker has been exploring relationships between film and painting. The scenes he creates in his paintings are reminiscent of emotional films that have collectively inspired us and made us think about our own lives, what we have experienced and loved and lost. Like so many films that provoke sadness and joy, Freaker’s paintings provide a tension between those emotions through delicate moments that invoke a joy through the colours that celebrate the experience, but also lament its passing. Without a history or a future, dialogue or sounds, the paintings allow the audience to bring their own life to the paintings and share in a dialogue with their own experiences.

Daniel Freaker received his MFA from the Slade School of Art in London where he explored the painterly qualities of print, video, film and photography and his paintings are reminiscent of film scenes and fragments of a broader narrative. Since studying, his work has evolved through collaboration with other artists and charities and many years of exhibiting and lecturing in the U.K. and internationally including the British Museum in London, Dae Won University in Korea and The Meera Gallery in Pune, India.

Freaker’s paintings sit between abstract and figurative spaces where the way paint is applied is equally as important as the image itself. Some details are defined where others are more suggestive and evocative. These provide a rich tapestry of interwoven processes and a textural quality to the work. There are also more unusual processes generating a sense of nostalgia about moments that are both beautiful and painful.

The subjects are often individuals, couples or groups of people in order to provoke thoughts of relationships or isolation. The scenes remind us of personal experiences, where the techniques and colours bring feelings of sentiment and longing with a contemporary twist of warmth and radiance. Distortions also exaggerate the emotional significance of the moment: connection, loss, vulnerability, or loneliness... This juxtaposition between vibrance and darkness, accident and intention, order and chaos, is what makes the work memorable.