Daniel Coston to Exhibit New Works at Cantrell Gallery

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.Â 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.Â 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.Â Many of the images are useless but a few remind me of things I saw as a kid in Southeastern Arkansas.Â 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.Â These photos evoke memories in me.Â I want to bring these memories back.Â 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 […]

Sep 15

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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!

Jun 26

by lcoston in Featured 0 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, artist, Contemporary Art, Daniel Coston, Delta, delta landscapes, Mississippi River, Rural, south Arkansas

Delta Rocket: Leaving the Past Behind

If it is a hot still day some where on the delta, a scene that will always catch your eye is a vehicle (it’s almost always a pickup) roaring along a dusty road just slightly ahead of a cloud of dust. If it’s far enough away that you can’t hear it, the scene is all the more entrancing. The pickup seems like a rocket blasting off for a space station when in reality it’s just heading for the nearest store. I have that overall idea in my head a lot of the time. It is an iconic scene for the delta…any delta with crops in varying stages of growth. It could be a pickup bumping along a turn row or blasting down a dirt road on the other side of a field. If the weather is dry the dust will be deep and easily thrown up into the hot, still air. Some of these fields will have a family plot tucked away by a paved highway. Maybe there will be a couple of trees. If the tiny cemetery is really old the trees may be just stumps…or gone altogether. So I put these two ideas together and liked the way […]

Mar 22

by lcoston in Featured 2 comments tags: Acrylic Painting, Arkansas, artist, Cantrell Gallery, Contemporary Art, Daniel Coston, delta landscapes, Rural, south Arkansas

“Arkansas, As Is” Exhibition Now Open at Cantrell Gallery

Daniel Coston’s “Arkansas, As Is” opened March 20th at Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas, and will continue through May 9th, 2015.Â Cantrell Gallery is located at 8206 Cantrell Road, Little Rock, AR. Gallery hours are Monday ”“ Saturday, 10-5:00.Â Call (501) 224-1335 for questions or directions. You can view the entire show here. Artist Statement “This group of paintings primarily depicts the rural Arkansas landscape…as it is.Â These are places that you can see driving about the state but the majority are from southeast Arkansas. I never try to represent the rural scenery with a “halo.”Â Always painting scenes with bright, golden sunshine glimmering off old home places wouldn’t seem true to me. Portraying a variety of structures with a range of seasons, weather, and conditions seems more appropriate and true to how life really is.Â And whatever I come upon and see is fair game for my paintings. I enjoy painting fields, graveyards, historic churches, rusting vehicles, stores, cotton gins and a myriad other things with equal interest. Sometimes I paint a scene “the way it was” but mostly, I’m showing how things are in the present. Satisfaction for me comes from including enough visual facts and clues […]

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.