Daniel Mosner

“What I Saw”

Daniel Mosner is from New York City. Born, raised and educated there, his escape from the urban world to a place in the country brought him to a house by a lake on a hill above the town of Oxford. In this idyllic setting, he paints.

But he also dreams:of other worlds, and other escapes.

Viewers of Mosner's latest work are compelled by his images to reorient themselves to a world that is familiar, but enigmatic. In his paintings, landscape forms are often dominant, but the figures who inhabit them are frequently anonymous, shielded, draped, or hidden. Yet, they are also engaged in activities which seem purposeful. It causes us to ask: How much do we need to know in order to understand? Why are we concerned with understanding? Is the message important?

In the images, technical concerns also challenge him. He pushes the dimensions, the levels of seeing, even the picture planes. There is a tension that comes into being between the layers of substance, and the layers of meaning, revealing the artist's many levels of interest. On one hand is the palette, the composition, the execution: the technical foundations of the work. On the other is the story, that which the viewer experiences as the search for the situational narrative, clearly represented, always the desired but elusive.

The paintings also reveal a conscious connection with nature, the landscape and environment. In them is an appreciation of the natural chaos, the inherent power of random arrangement that is balanced by the careful and purposeful arrangements of the figures. Some of the figures have dynamic movement, and mimic the positions of the limbs of trees with their own, while others qualify the inertia and stasis of boulders.

The greatest art speaks to a universal audience using a universal visual language. Daniel Mosner has said that he wants his art to be “beyond time, not trapped in time.” In this way, he links his artistic heritage to those who lived in the earliest times, artists who sought to define themselves through the reflection of their spiritual connection with the world.

Mark Williamson, PhD.
Instructor of Art History, Broome Community College