JACKSON CENTER — The picture is rosy for Dan Knepper.
The Jackson Center artist has garnered important attention recently from several quarters: he is profiled in an article, “10 to Watch,” in the December issue of Watercolor Artist magazine; one of his oil paintings was named a finalist in Southwest Art magazine’s artistic excellence competition; he was a finalist in the Richardson75 International Portrait Competition; and his paintings were part of the prestigious Art at the Mill near Washington, D.C.
Closer to home, illustrations commissioned by Dayton Children’s Hospital for the lobby of its new building are now on the walls, delighting adults and children, alike; he’s had a one-man gallery show in St. Mary’s for several weeks; his works are featured in a two-man show at a gallery in Bay Village going on now and his work was included in an invitational landscape exhibit in Artspace Lima.
Then there are the galleries in Charleston, South Carolina, Morehead City, North Carolina, and Cincinnati, who are all requesting more of his work to sell to their clients.
Whew!
Knepper took a break from the easel recently to talk with the Sidney Daily News about all the success.
The recognition by Watercolor Artist magazine was a welcome surprise, he said. He had received an email from Jessica Canterbury, managing editor of the magazine and writer of the annual roundup of the best up-and-coming watercolorists from around the world.
“She said, ‘You’ve been recommended,’” Knepper recalled. Knepper guessed that it was James Toogood who had nominated him. Toogood is an award-winning painter whose own art has been called “jaw-dropping.”
Of Knepper’s work, Toogood says in Watercolor Artist, “There is a fluid precise elegance to his work.”
The magazine, available now in print and online, published photos of two of Knepper’s works and a full-page artist’s statement, which Canterbury compiled from answers to questions she’d emailed to the former Botkins teacher.
“This is the first time I’ve had a whole page article written about me and especially to be recommended by James — that’s high praise,” Knepper said.
Canterbury said nominations are made by top watercolor instructors and exhibit jurors.
“(Knepper’s) work is so precise, but it’s painterly, so it looks expressive,” she said about why he was included in this year’s featured group. “He exhibits great skill for depicting light.”
The portrait he sent for the Richardson competition now hangs in the company’s gallery in Wisconsin. It will also be reproduced in a hard-cover book about the finalists.
“I was pretty honored to be in an international competition,” Knepper said of that one. He also admitted to being excited that Southwest Art liked his work enough to make it one of the top 100 finalists. That was confirmation to Knepper that he’s on the right path.
“Some of these pretty famous people I know have been in this competition. If you’re a finalist, you’re probably in pretty good company,” he said.
Knepper relies on fellow artists to critique his work and to help him decide which paintings to send where.
“I try to find stuff that impresses me. When I’m at the finishing-up stage, I send work to Steven Walker. If he likes it, I know it’s good,” Knepper said. He recounted a story about artist Ryan Brown. Brown, Knepper noted, likes to compare his work to that of famous artists.
“If mine were hanging next to a painting by John Singer Sargent, would it look good?” Brown is said to have asked.
“I think, ‘If mine were hanging next to Steven Walker’s, how bad would it look,’” Knepper laughed. “Sometimes I know (it’s all right). When I finished ‘Brooklyn Bed’ (one of the paintings featured in the Watercolor Artist profile), I knew it was good. It painted itself. It flows.”
The cartoonish illustrations in the children’s hospital were fun because they came wholly from Knepper’s imagination.
“I spent a lot of time smiling when I did those illustrations,” he said. The cartoons explore flight, a theme that Knepper has addressed with considerable affection and wit.
In his oils, he has been exploring the sky, a subject he can’t imagine ever exhausting.
“I am constantly trying to improve my technique with the clouds. I love the translucency and the transparency,” he said.
Despite recent successes with the medium, he says he’d like to have “greater competency” with oil. Another goal: to be in a museum show. He has his eye on Quest for the West 2018, a renowned annual exhibit mounted by the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis.
And he plans to have a studio sale of his work in Jackson Center in November. No dates have been set yet, but Knepper said he will post them on his Facebook page as soon as he decides when the sale will be. That will give people here the chance to purchase paintings by the artist whose talent the art world seems poised to embrace.
