New Exhibition! Arkansas: From the Tops to the Bottoms

May 09

by lcoston in Featured 1 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, Cantrell Gallery, Contemporary Art, delta landscapes, Rural, south Arkansas

New Exhibition! Arkansas: From the Tops to the Bottoms

Contemporary painter Daniel Coston’s ARKANSAS: FROM THE TOPS TO THE BOTTOMS opens May 12th at Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas, and continues through July 1, 2017. The opening night reception for the exhibition will be on Friday, May 12, 6-8:00. Please join us! It will be a great opportunity to visit with the artist while viewing his works. If you can’t make it that evening, the show will continue through July 1. Cantrell Gallery is located at 8208 Cantrell Road, Little Rock, AR. Gallery hours are Monday – Saturday, 10-5:00. Call (501) 224-1335 for questions or directions. See the full exhibit here! Artist Statement, Arkansas: From the Tops to the Bottoms “Every year as I work on a new collection of paintings, I try to visually depict my home state – a personal and visual “state of the state”, if you will. In years past, I’ve seen the paintings as representing a horizontal trip around Arkansas, as I search for striking scenes. I’ve been making the trip from the hilltops of Northwest Arkansas to the Delta flatlands and back again for nearly three decades and the landscape continues to inspire me. Recently I have grown more aware of the […]

Dec 09

by lcoston in Commissions, Featured 2 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, commissions, historic paintings, south Arkansas

Commission – Arkansas Baptist Home for Children, Monticello

Monticello, Arkansas, my hometown, has two children’s’ homes. The Presbyterian Home is on the southwest part of town and as a child, I passed it many times headed to Green Hill to visit my Mom’s parents. The Baptist Home is on the north edge of Monticello. I knew many kids from both and saw them daily at school or athletic practices. About two years ago, Jerry Morrow, who grew up at the Baptist Home, called and asked if I could do a painting of it, showing all of the main buildings that people would remember from the 1950’s to the ’70’s or so. I said I thought I could manage it if he had enough photos that would allow me to piece all the buildings together. The boys’ and girls’ dormitories had been torn down since then and they were the most recognizable buildings beside the main or administrative building. Unfortunately at the time he called, I was about to have shoulder surgery so I couldn’t really get started for about three months. And even then my right arm was not very strong. Eventually I began drawing the Administrative building in the center and started working my way out on […]

Dec 07

by lcoston in Commissions, Featured 1 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, commissions, delta landscapes, Rural

Commission – Rice Farm Work Crew

A long time ago, a couple of guys from Stuttgart, Arkansas traveled south to Drew County looking for a prairie to grow rice. They found just what they needed, bought some land and found water enough to start a farm. They were the first rice farmers in Drew County. This was the mid-1940s. In the early 1980’s, Monticello native Richard Reinhart commissioned me to do a painting of him standing on the edge of his rice field watching a storm brewing off in the southeast. Rice farmers have to watch storms because they can drop too much water on the fields and damage the system of levees, creating a serious problem. I was only too happy to do that for him mainly because it was such a good idea for a painting of life in my home area. I was really proud of that painting. Richard and his wife, Eddye Ann, have purchased my work occasionally and at the end of one recent commission they showed me an amazing photograph of a work crew on Richard’s father’s rice farm. There were 10 workers standing in a line. One of the two older men was holding Richard when he was a […]

May 06

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, Contemporary Art, delta landscapes

Artsy Shark – Featured Artist Profile

Artsy Shark has a fantastic profile of my work this week, please check it out! What makes a place special, unique, memorable? The concept of “sense of place” is one that I’ve explored through my paintings throughout my entire career, while focusing on themes like isolation, abandonment, and decay. You can view my work at Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock, or on my website. If you’d like to inquire about a work or discuss a commission, please contact me!

Sep 15

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments

Painting the Arkansas Delta – Video

Want to see more of Daniel’s Arkansas Delta paintings? Check out this new video “Painting the Arkansas Delta.” It’s a curated selection of some of his favorite and most appreciated delta paintings. Enjoy!

Jan 05

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, artist, blues music, delta landscapes, Mississippi River, Rural

The Pull of the Mississippi River

Note: This is the first in a series of posts from Daniel on the topic of “Why I paint the Arkansas Landscape.” In this first post, he writes about the influence of the Mississippi River on his work. I came back to southeastern Arkansas in 1981 and soon got settled in Dermott. After getting organized at the high school there, I was soon drawing what I saw around me which was the Delta. The Mississippi Delta, that is. I could feel that river for the first time in my life. And that’s kind of odd since Monticello, my hometown, was only 30 miles further west. But Monticello was in the hills and Dermott had been flooded in the ’27 Flood. In the 80’s, I remember watching thunderheads boiling up over the river…just a few miles east.

Oct 21

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, artist, Cantrell Gallery, church paintings, Daniel Coston, Delta churches, delta landscapes, historic paintings, Rural, south Arkansas

New Video – Southeast Arkansas Church Paintings

Over the years, Daniel has painted many of the wonderful and historic churches dotted throughout the southern part of Arkansas. We’ve collected some of those into a slideshow video for you to enjoy! The vast majority of the paintings in the video sold years ago but, if you’d like to see some of his recent work, call or visit Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock. You can also keep up with his work by “liking” his Facebook page: Daniel Coston Art Studio

Aug 27

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, artist, Artist Portfolio Magazine, Cantrell Gallery, Daniel Coston, Delta, delta landscapes, Rural

On Landscape Painting – Remember with Respect

I asked Daniel to share some thoughts on landscape painting, in conjunction with the publication of several of his artworks in the Landscapes issue of Artist Portfolio Magazine. It’s an honor to have his work selected alongside so many great artists! 1. How has your landscape painting style changed or evolved over the last 5 or 10 years? For many years I was simply painting a portrait of “a place.” Maybe it was a home place, a well-known building, or perhaps a country church. I still seek to render the “location” as it was or maybe still is. But as time has gone by, I’m also interested in putting the “place” in the right atmosphere… or weather… to make it seem more realistic. This can have the effect of making the scene more dramatic. 2. Is there a mood or feeling that your want viewers to take away from your landscape paintings? In many small towns and country crossroads, we find dilapidated churches, banks, and schools. I enjoy “renovating” some of these back to their original “glories.” But I also hope that the viewer will feel some sadness that these places are gone or going. Sometimes I try to find […]

Feb 19

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, Cantrell Gallery, Delta, delta landscapes, Rural

Daniel Coston to Exhibit New Works at Cantrell Gallery

Contemporary painter Daniel Coston’s BEYOND THE PHOTOGRAPHS will open March 11 at Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas, and will continue through May 7th, 2016. The opening night reception for BEYOND THE PHOTOGRAPHS will be on Friday, March 11, 6-8:00. Please join us! It will be a great opportunity to visit with the artist while viewing his works. If you can’t make it that evening, the show will continue through May 7. Cantrell Gallery is located at 8206 Cantrell Road, Little Rock, AR. Gallery hours are Monday – Saturday, 10-5:00. Call (501) 224-1335 for questions or directions. Artist Statement, BEYOND THE PHOTOGRAPHS “Every year I take a lot of reference snapshots of Arkansas that I add to an ever-growing archive. Many of the images are useless but a few remind me of things I saw as a kid in Southeastern Arkansas. Some even seem iconic to me, expressing something about the geography we call home. So I work on these pictures…drawing the scenes until I think I can do something worthwhile. These photos evoke memories in me. I want to bring these memories back. At times, the memories could be about the sunlight on a particular day…the sky in […]

Oct 19

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, Best in Show, Competition, Portrait

“Portrait of the Artist” Awarded Best in Show

I am honored to learn that my painting “Portrait of the Artist” was awarded the Best in Show award for the Artists of Northwest Arkansas’s 21st Annual Regional Art Competition. 108 artists from a 4-state area (Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri,and Kansas) submitted over 350 works. The entries were reviewed by 3 judges who selected 52 works of art for the show. The exhibit of 52 works consists of 6 categories of art including drawing & pastels, digital art & photography, oil, mixed media, sculpture, and water media (watercolor and acrylic). The exhibition will be on display from October 1 through October 31st at the Fayetteville Underground in Fayetteville, Arkansas. “Portrait of the Artist” made its debut at my one-man show at Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas in April of 2015. While it wasn’t intended to fit with the theme of the exhibition, I included it more to show a better range of my work. There were several concepts running through my mind as I painted this self-portrait. True, I intended to create a realistic likeness, but beyond that, there are a couple of other items that played a large role in its development. First, I’m a great admirer and student […]