daniel lopez

Daniel Lopez, has the ability to work around aspects of the ordinary in ways many won’t. Daniel works with all sort of media depending on the purposes and nature of each project, from ceramic, to watercolour, photography, digital media, and acrylic or oil on canvas. “Each project requires its own language,“ he says "The joy of an artist is to discover the unusual in everyday life, reflect on an ordinary object like a box, a window, a manhole, the rain marks on the walls… little things that speak of our surrounding and defines ourselves.”

Daniel grew up in a small city in Andalusia, a beautiful town with a rich historical heritage that was well preserved and internationally recognised. When he was thirteen, he moved to Cuenca, another stunning old city. There, he noticed something peculiar: the old town looked more vibrant and new than the new town, as if time had reversed.

Then, when he was twenty-three, he moved to Havana to continue his career at the University of Art of Havana. He was amazed by the city, its culture, its people, its history. He saw how time had left its mark on every corner of the city, more than in any other place he had known before.

People who visited Cuba often said that “it felt like going back in time, the old cars, the architecture, even the lifestyle”. But he discovered that time was more present and alive in every step through the city than in Europe, where there was a policy of hiding the rubbish and preserving the heritage as if it were frozen.

A few years ago, he moved to Birmingham and found an incredible movement of a great city that was changing and growing every day. He was fascinated by how the city was transforming: new buildings rising, old ones falling, new tram rail, new circulation system, new, new, new. But time was also more evident in this city. Every scene of the city was eclectic and bizarre, where decay and shiny glass towers coexisted as if they were familiar.

At first, he started to capture the changing city through photography and large paintings on canvas with scenes that were changing in a matter of weeks. Then he started to work with the rain, working in the studio with black ink and then taking the paintings outside where the rain and gravity had the final word, erasing and transforming the abstract paintings into something unexpected. Soon he realised that he could combine these two elements in watercolour, working with the eclectic architecture of the city as before and using water and gravity as he did with the rain. The process became something extraordinary, capturing the drama that he loved about this city. The decay and the rain marks on the walls, the brick worn out by the rain. The time held in another walk through the city.

Daniels new Collection of work is now able to view online and in the gallery, see both new limited editions and original watercolours by clicking below.