artist bio
D A N I E L B L A N S H A R D
L I G H T A L C H E M I S T
For over three decades Daniel Blanshard has been an Artist in continuous experimentation of classical makery and etheric light play. His recent 'Radiance' series of brass and copper discs are the culmination of years of slow deliberate experimentation in which he has honed his own unique technique of art makery, working more like a jeweler, engraver, or blacksmith at the scale of sculpture. Like a Medieval Artisan he works up surfaces with shellac and patinas, polishing and burnishing to give his metallic bases luster and atmospheric depth. Then in a gesture or erasure he etches his signature dot-making, one point at a time, not the silk-screen mass production of Lichtenstein and Warhol's dot-matrix paintings, but a slow organic free-form line work, closer to Aboriginal dreamtime styles. It's as though the lines are referencing a place or form so lightly that the surfaces shimmer in an etheric zone between biological forms and a radiant celestial light play, like shafts of cathedral light hitting stone. With different depths of pressure the line work can appear to take on a momentary 3D depth, before disappearing, or shifting in dimension in the very act of observation. Luminous, kinetic and active, the brass and copper are highly responsive surfaces, creating effects evocative of the way water reflects light and movement. And so the metaphors just keep teeming, one moment an etching of a sky scape can then reappear perhaps as a kelp forest, Blanshard captures the organic, the ephemeral and the mobile within the inorganic fixed qualities of his metallic base. This sense of aliveness captured in an inorganic material has been the fascination of Blanshard throughout his career.
Blanshard's time at Elam was spent in the Contemporary Māori Art Department of Te Toi Hau run by Kaumatua Selwyn Muru and Brett Graham, who fostered a sophisticated cross-disciplinary exploration of makery, medium and materiality underpinned by an esoteric and cosmological ethos. Both Muru and Graham's sculptural works were appearing in urban spaces with large public commissions. In this pioneering Wananga, Blanshard collaborated with his peer group of now well-known artists Dion Hitchins, Peter Stitchbury, Andrew McCleod, Brendan Wilkinson and Charles Koroneho were also honing their artistic beginnings. In Blanshard's early works this activation of spirit forms, biology and geometry formed the basis for his ongoing exploration, swapping figurative / ground interplay and disrupting geometric patterns through erasure, rotations, reversals, and folding to generate a codex of abstract forms like his own alphabet. Within the Te Toi Hau environment Blanshard evolved his signature mark-making, exploring the possibilities of steel, evoking new life-forms that shimmy and oscillate between symbols and creatures, a process that continues to evolve today as he turns his hand to more precious metals and the alchemy of light play that they offer.