Horizontal Paintings by Dan O'Neill

When Dan has an opportunity to paint a landscape he tightens up his brush work a bit. Not to do realism but to put a contrast of states of motion in his compositions.

Take a look at every horizon and every horizontal line: far edges of creek beds, sturdy crags of rock, rolling burms in fields he seems to find a way to anchor the subject matter while expanding the horizon "beyond the frame".

With a distant foundation he is then able to bring the living scenery into the foreground with even more motion while using less gesture.

Where Dan's vertical paintings capture the up close motion of trees, his horizontal renderings seem to expand outward both in distance and width.