Melanie Daniel
Melanie Daniel (Canadian, born 1972), Jerusalem, 2012, oil on canvas, 41 x 54 in. Schwartz Art Collection, Harvard Business School, 2013.5.
Born and raised in British Columbia, Melanie Daniel currently lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel. She received her BFA and MFA from Bezalel Academy in Israel, and her experiences living in both Canada and Israel have informed her work. Daniel’s large-scale paintings, with their striking palette, distorted perspectives, bold brushstrokes, and haunting drips of color, depict ambiguous forms interacting with architectural elements in an almost surreal, abstract landscape. In her work, as she has stated, “Narratives remain unwritten, and figures are almost absorbed by their surroundings.”
Daniel has had numerous exhibitions, including solo exhibitions at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel; and Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; among others. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, the 2009 Rappaport Prize for a Young Israeli Painter, a Creative Capital Grant, and the NARS Foundation Residency in New York.