Daniel Chester

Daniel Chester

Daniel Chester is a visual artist originally from Enniscrone county Leitrim, now living in Dromahair County Leitrim. He obtained a Masters in Visual Arts Practices from IADT in 2009, previous to that he obtained a Degree in Fine Art from Sligo IT in 2001. Chester has exhibited throughout Ireland and abroad, with a number of recent solo and group. Daniel’s work has been seleted for the RUA awards every year for the last six years and he recently was awarded the cairde visual and the model award residency for his painting “Mayo Marshlands”. Daniel has been awarded a number of artist bursary awards from Leitrim Coco and currently holds a studio in the Leitrim Sculputre Center, Manorhamilton. 

Daniel’s work has been purchased by the OPW, Leitrim Coco, Danske Bank and has been commisioned to do large paintings by Google Ireland and other numerous private collections throughout the world. 

“As an artist, painting means a constant balancing between what was my intial pictorial intent for a painting to how this chages rapidly through the process of creating the work. The realization that this often emerges organically is the one I try to allow throughout the process. 

There is a constant battle in my mind and the painting surface between the atmospheical and pictorial development of the work, its connection to my overall practice and how it sits with a contemporary context. The work itself is a response to an emotion, a feeling, an experience. My response is how I convey this a 2D surface, How do i allow an audience to also experience this, how do I invite them in?

Intentionally one of my main ambitions with my practice is to create a specific mood or emotional response in painting of the landscape or nature that surrounds us.

In my preception of nature, the remote forest, the disorderly wilderness, the ever so slight indication to humans presence within the landscape I aim to find a blend between the real and the fiction. When amongst the vegetation or the tracks within a forest, I feel at ease, I am searching for the magic from these hidden places, its history, its healing qualities, all seam to have the ability to exist beyond time.

Somewhere in the tangeld chaos of vegetation, figures, shapes, light and darkness shadows a preseence exists, its is bigger than me,it is bigger than us.

I paint the landscape in complete awe”