The Studio

Daniel Tucker’s paintings are infused with an alchemy of heart and hand. After viewing, one’s eyes usually continue dancing to the music of his colors. Every painting reveals an inner landscape, an experiential architecture and a visual poetry capable of placing beautiful imprints inside the feelings of the viewer.

Tucker’s paintings are both transparent and invisible. The content is often as much about what isn’t visible as what is. A mysterious embrace of the beauties of life is expressed in the colorful movement and fluency of the elements. They emanate a positive energy, signs of his inspiration, and a proximity to a unique fountain of creativity.

Some artists are unaware of the walls built around them by their own concepts and story. Tucker is a true visionary whose paintings are excavated from inside his own cave walls, his open fields, his mountains. They can be experienced as topographical maps of the territories (some as yet unknown and undiscovered) within which one can wander, seek a buried treasure, or un-map what has been mapped. His body of work spans decades and exhibits a depth of feeling and a spontaneity unusual for a mature artist.

In 2012, Tucker sold his entire studio collection to a single collector. This enabled him to fully concentrate on new work. At the time, he was living and working in Telluride, Colorado, a world-renowned alpine hamlet where he founded the Ah Haa School for the Arts and The American Academy of Bookbinding.

His most recent exhibition, “The Heart of the Matter”, consisted of 62 paintings. His works are in major private and public collections including London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, The Metropolitan Museum in New York City, The Denver Art Museum, and the library of MOMA in New York City.

In 2019, Tucker’s trajectory involved an attempt on his life outside his studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This traumatic experience gifted him with a new freedom of expression which is generating new series of paintings including “Notes from the Observatory”, “The Coherence of Bears”, “Prisms” and “A Walk in Other Lands”. He still paints almost every day in his downtown Santa Fe studio.

With an exhibit history going back to 1973, Tucker has made deep dives into painting, book production, publishing, poetry and films. This describes the arc of his life—an almost fifty year multi-dimensional journey and excavation of his creative wellspring. He begins each painting as he begins each day—with a sense of wonder and an enthusiasm for exploring possibilities!