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DANIEL WHITE: KNOCK SEVEN BELLS
May 23 - July 4, 2025
opening reception: Friday, May 23 (6-8p
Does memory create its own landscape, or does it just make those events more bearable? In the end, does it all work out? What is real between us? What isn’t real? There is just something tragic about growing up, and no one is spared the harsh truths. Before you know it, you can’t remember what it was like wandering down trails that led to nothing or holding your breath underwater. Memory is a push/pull and so is painting alongside art history. (…)
Exploring subjects past and present, White’s latest series of paintings for Knock Seven Bells, is a deep dive into the artist’s figurative abstract work.
The show title, taken from an informal British expression having multiple meanings, fits neatly here: informal subjects presented as formal framed oil paintings.
White infuses remnants of memory, truths/half-truths, and implied memory to ask vulnerable questions:
Does memory create its own landscape, or does it just make those events more bearable?
In the end, does it all work out?
What is real between us?
What isn’t real?
There is just something tragic about growing up, and no one is spared the harsh truths. Before you know it, you can’t remember what it was like wandering down trails that led to nothing or holding your breath underwater. Memory is a push/pull and so is painting alongside art history. Often, they are stories that start out as tragedies, turn into an adventure, and sometimes end well.
The weight of art history is a far heavier load on the brush than the paint. The weight of memory can be even heavier, and painting is always present with the past. What one has to do with both is turn a mirror onto it and ask questions.
Where, through paint, does the trail end, do they survive the boat wreck, are we going to make it through?
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Illustration artists being White’s earliest influence, his love for inspiring sources varies widely; from the vulnerable honesty of a John Bankston painting, the reflective work of Claire Tabouret, the nocturnal paintings of Frederic Remington, the figures on the side of a 19th Century Chinese serving bowl, to the saturated flatness of Japanese woodblock prints and all the way forward to the Modernists’ approach to painting or the utter banality of Pop Art. This creates the DNA for his work. It is then distilled and rendered down to a complex simplicity and essential elements. Doing this on the formal structure of oil on canvas brings playfulness to an otherwise often serious medium.
Daniel White lives and works in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area. He is a seasoned arts professional by day as the Director of the Paul R. Jones Museum and The University of Alabama Gallery. He holds an MFA from The School for American Crafts at RIT (2002) and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Montevallo (2000).
His artwork, embracing playful informality and often self-reflective, can be found in private collections across the United States.
Daniel White
Lost in Thought
2025
oil on canvas
40 by 30 in. (ca. 101,6 by 76,2 cm)
private US collection
Daniel White
Image for the Teen Runaway Handbook
2025
oil on canvas
36 by 36 in. (ca. 91,4 by 91,4 cm)
Daniel White
One with Everything
2025
oil on canvas
40 by 30 in. (ca. 101,6 by 76,2 cm)
private US collection
Daniel White
The Captain & his Vessel
2025
oil on canvas
20 by 24 in. (ca. 50,8 by 61 cm)
private US collection
Daniel White
Der Kommisar
2025
oil on canvas
36 by 36 in. (ca. 91,4 by 91,4 cm)
private US collection
Daniel White
Grillin’ the Most
2025
oil on canvas
16 by 20 in. (ca. 40,6 by 50,8 cm)
Daniel White
Hot Doggin’
2025
oil on canvas
30 by 24 in. (ca. 76,2 by 61 cm)
Daniel White
All Day Happy Hour
2025
oil on canvas
24 by 30 in. (ca. 61 by 76,2 cm)
private US collection
Daniel White
Enlighten Me, Then
2025
oil on canvas
36 by 36 in. (ca. 91,4 by 91,4 cm)
Daniel White
Namaste, Hold the Onions
2025
oil on canvas
20 by 16 in. (ca. 50,5 by 40,6 cm)
Daniel White
Namaste with Everyting - All of it
2025
oil on canvas
20 by 16 in. (ca. 50,5 by 40,6 cm)
Daniel White
The Dreamer and the Machinist
2025
oil on canvas
24 by 30 in. (ca. 61 by 76,2 cm)
Daniel White
Kodachrome Karl
2025
oil on canvas
24 by 24 in. (ca. 61 by 61 cm)
private US collection
Daniel White
Full Moon
2025
oil on canvas
20 by 20 in. (ca. 50,8 by 50,8 cm)
Daniel White
Nightswimming
2025
oil on canvas
20 by 16 in. (ca. 50,5 by 40,6 cm)
Daniel White
Full Steam Ahead
2025
oil on canvas
36 by 36 in. (ca. 91,4 by 91,4 cm)
Daniel White
Bobby the Bobber
2025
oil on canvas
14 by 14 in. (ca. 35,6 by 35,6 cm)
Daniel White
Sam the Sinker
2025
oil on canvas
14 by 14 in. (ca. 35,6 by 35,6 cm)
Daniel White
Toby the Tugboat
2025
oil on canvas
14 by 14 in. (ca. 35,6 by 35,6 cm)
Daniel White
Fast Ronnie
2025
oil on canvas
24 by 30 in. (ca. 61 by 76,2 cm)
Daniel White
Full Moon - Light Blue
2025
oil on canvas
20 by 20 in. (ca. 50,8 by 50,8 cm)
Daniel White
Full Moon - Dark Blue
2025
oil on canvas
20 by 20 in. (ca. 50,8 by 50,8 cm)
private US collection