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 6 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 […]

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 […]

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