The Process w/ Daniel Graves - Salomé’s Rue

An installment in the Art Process related content featured on The FAA Collective

Dear Patrons,

Today the FAA opens its doors after a winter break, revived and ready to inspire you and contribute to your artistic endeavours  this coming year.  We have decided to release one of our most cherished videos featuring FAA Founder and Director, Daniel Graves. Filmed in Daniel’s private studio in Florence, we watch him while painting, Salomé’s Rue, to learn about his process for this work.

During this private studio session we learn from Daniel how the process of creating a painting is deep and complex, and what are some of the challenges an artist faces when painting  historical subject matter. As Daniel says, there is “no formula for producing a painting,” and the task requires thoughtful consideration of all aspects, from creating the ideal studio setting, to lighting, choice of the model, and the subject’s attire. We enjoy his very distinct studio environment in Florence, the dark walls and single source of natural light set off the model’s skin tones, while creating an atmosphere of almost mystical contemplation. One can almost hear the brush strokes as Daniel works on the canvas.

If you’d like to learn more about Daniel Graves’ painting, Salomé’s Rue, we recommend a second video Art Talk w/ Daniel Graves - Mixing your palette to tell a story in which Daniel discusses his inspiration for the work and more!

More about Daniel:

Born in 1949, in Rochester, New York, Daniel Graves graduated from the Maryland Art Institute of Art in 1972 where he studied with Joseph Sheppard and Frank Russell. He continued his studies at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate School of Fine Art in Florence, Italy, with Richard Serrin. Following a course of training with Richard Lack in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he taught at the Atelier Lack Studio of Fine Art. In the late 1970s, Graves returned to Florence and undertook individual study with Nerina Simi, who maintained a classical nineteenth-century studio. Ms. Simi was the daughter of the Florentine painter Filadelfo Simi, who had studied with Jean-Léon Gérôme, the head of the French Academy in Paris in the 1870s.

With such a rich background of training, Graves has created a style of oil painting that blends the Florentine tradition of Simi and the realist painter, Pietro Annigoni, with the draftsmanship of the French artist, Charles Bargue. Graves was the first to discover Bargue’s, Cours des Dessins, and to integrate this masterwork into the Florence Academy’s teaching curriculum.

Daniel Graves joined Charles Cecil to found Studio Cecil-Graves in Florence, which for nearly a decade trained many practitioners of classical realism. Graves then established The Florence Academy of Art in 1991. The Florence Academy of Art has been in the forefront of classical realist art education for more than twenty years.

In “Tradition in the 21st Century,” an essay published in the exhibition catalogue, Realism Revisited: The Florence Academy of Art (2003), Graves described his training in Old Masters techniques and heralded the classical realist renaissance in aesthetics and art education. The exhibition traveled throughout Europe and the United States. Practitioners, connoisseurs and scholars of modern representational art recognize “Realism Revisited” and its accompanying catalogue as defining moments in the appreciation of classical realist art. In April 2008, Daniel Graves and The Florence Academy of Art received the Excellence in Art Education Award from the Portrait Society of America.

When he is not teaching, Graves is an active painter of figures, portraits and still lifes in his studio in Florence. He pursues landscape painting during his extensive travels. His work is in both public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad.

To view more of Daniel’s work please visit:

Website: www.danielgravesart.com

Instagram: @danielgravesart