Daniel Finaldi

My educational background began modestly. I was raised in an immigrant home and attended a Community College in Rochester New York. From that point onward I discovered my calling as an artist and pursued it. I transferred to SUNY New Paltz and then completed my MFA degree at Brooklyn College. My mentors at Brookly were Lois Dodd, Lennart Anderson and Phillip Pearlstein. My lasting mentor post graduation has been Lois Dodd as well as Mel Leipzig.

Since that time I have participated in numerous group shows and one person shows in the New York and New Jersey region. I am a member of Trenton Artists Association and a former member of Princeton Artist Alliance. Within the past 5 years I have had opportunities to show my work on Cape Cod. Most recently I have been included in the third volume of Cape Cod Contemporary Artists written by Deborah Forman.

I have taught fine art, drawing and painting on the college level and within a public high school. My experience in teaching has clarified my own aesthetic. I have created a number of paintings depicting my students on campus. Since my work is about people and reality, I have found it most inspiring to create images of my students.
I am invested in painting directly from life from the beginning of the process to the end. I find that to be most exciting and it provides endless opportunities to change and modify the image.
Beauty is not a word that I shirk away from which is in my view counter cultural. In our current environment, irony and politics is a driving force in art. I am personally invested in engaging the real world without punctuating any forced ideology on what I am seeing and experiencing.




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