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Interview with London Art blog
Tshirt featured on Hide Your Arms

Daniel Abbott was born in Devon in 1982 and now lives and works in East London.
He has exhibited work in London, New York, Gothenburg and Munich.

"My work emerges from an engaging and often exhausting process of creating abstract
compositions by layering whatever medium I'm using. As I work on a piece it will become
chaotic, then I'll rein it back in. The work can become so multi-layered that I'll sometimes
paint over nearly the whole canvas and begin again, leaving only small remnants of the piece
in it's earlier state poking through.

The resulting work shows a history and evolution. It starts with confused messages between
brain and hand being haphazardly executed into marks and images. Once these initial
marks are committed, it's then a conscious process that determines which elements survive
and which are covered or obscured by new marks.

Personal experience becomes manifested in my work. The mood of a painting can change according
to how I'm feeling and it's up to my surroundings and state of mind to determine how a
piece ends.It becomes clear what I am trying to express in the later stages of working on a piece.

The message I want my work to shout out is that life can be a harsh and unforgiving
event, but when we are taken to dark or extreme places, humanity and beauty can be found in
surprising locations and moving experiences."

"Broken down and observed in detail, these paintings make sense as aesthetic purposeful
strokes of paint each never the same twice and in relation to its neighbouring mark in
either a complimentary or reactive way. Observed from afar people make sense as classes,
races, schools of thought or entire nations each carrying their qualities, each unavoidably
causing or effecting the perception of the whole. Observed from afar these paintings make sense
as framed emotions, stories, landscapes and reflections of life, all symbolised through colour
and movement as a guide to meaning and grounded relativity.
There is a pattern here."