Artist Statement
I am a product of the urban environment.
As a child raised in New York, I was constantly confronted by the physical geometry of the city, with all its order and disorder. When I looked out my window I saw other buildings just like mine, buildings encased in even rows of bricks, punctuated by windows, doors and fire escapes, and fringed on top with the haphazard intersecting patterns of antennae and water towers. As the sun moved overhead, I watched the shadows and the bright areas shift, revealing new shapes of light and dark, new depths to the dimensions of buildings and train trestles. The city, for me, was full of wonder and mystery, planned yet chaotic.
This is the source of my aesthetic, and in all my work I seek to discover and maintain an underlying structural foundation. In my cityscapes I attempt to find some method to the urban ‘madness’, and in landscapes I try to capture the unifying pattern that is inherent in nature’s randomness.
A Landscape Painter
Born and raised in the Bronx, Daniel Hauben is acclaimed as the borough’s most versatile and prolific painter. Working in both oil paint and chalk pastel, he has spent 35 years capturing the life of the Bronx on canvas or paper, setting up his easel en plein air on street corners and overpasses, under elevated subway trains or in playgrounds. “I’m a landscape painter,” he says. “It just so happens that the landscape I paint is encrusted with the Bronx.”
His work captures the play of light and shadow in the urban environment: the patterns cast on the street by the elevated train trestles, the windows of apartment buildings gilded at sunset, the sharp white heat of a sidewalk in high summer, or the deeply shadowed canyons between tall buildings on late autumn afternoons.
Not Just The Bronx
An avid traveler, Hauben has journeyed far afield, carrying his painting supplies and easel with him. “There is no better way to learn about a new place than to set up your easel on a corner and paint life as it revolves around you,” he says. Hauben has painted in Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, France, Southern India and Costa Rica, as well as New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia and California.
Painting Light
From the warm glow of an autumnal Virginia dusk captured in delicate pastel, to the bright afternoon light glancing off tall city buildings, to the gritty layers of textured oil paint carved out to portray shadowed, crumbling urban structures, Hauben is able to capture and express light as a life force. His art brings home to us what it means to live in this world – in both a natural and an urban environment – and it reminds us that there is beauty and fragility in both.
Artist Statement
I am a product of the urban environment.
As a child raised in New York, I was constantly confronted by the physical geometry of the city, with all its order and disorder. When I looked out my window I saw other buildings just like mine, buildings encased in even rows of bricks, punctuated by windows, doors and fire escapes, and fringed on top with the haphazard intersecting patterns of antennae and water towers. As the sun moved overhead, I watched the shadows and the bright areas shift, revealing new shapes of light and dark, new depths to the dimensions of buildings and train trestles. The city, for me, was full of wonder and mystery, planned yet chaotic.
This is the source of my aesthetic, and in all my work I seek to discover and maintain an underlying structural foundation. In my cityscapes I attempt to find some method to the urban ‘madness’, and in landscapes I try to capture the unifying pattern that is inherent in nature’s randomness.
A Landscape painter
Born and raised in the Bronx, Daniel Hauben is acclaimed as the borough’s most versatile and prolific painter. Working in both oil paint and chalk pastel, he has spent 25 years capturing the life of the Bronx on canvas or paper, setting up his easel en plein air on street corners and overpasses, under elevated subway trains or in playgrounds. “I’m a landscape painter,” he says. “It just so happens that the landscape I paint is encrusted with the Bronx.”
His work captures the play of light and shadow in the urban environment: the patterns cast on the street by the elevated train trestles, the windows of apartment buildings gilded at sunset, the sharp white heat of a sidewalk in high summer, or the deeply shadowed canyons between tall buildings on late autumn afternoons.
Not Just The Bronx
An avid traveler, Hauben has journeyed far afield, carrying his painting supplies and easel with him. “There is no better way to learn about a new place than to set up your easel on a corner and paint life as it revolves around you,” he says. Hauben has painted in Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, France, Southern India and Costa Rica, as well as New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia and California.
Painting Light
From the warm glow of an autumnal Virginia dusk captured in delicate pastel, to the bright afternoon light glancing off tall city buildings, to the gritty layers of textured oil paint carved out to portray shadowed, crumbling urban structures, Hauben is able to capture and express light as a life force. His art brings home to us what it means to live in this world – in both a natural and an urban environment – and it reminds us that there is beauty and fragility in both.
CURRICULUM VITAE
COLLECTIONS
COMMISSION & AWARDS
Commission – Fordham Hill Houses 2019
Residency – East End Arts Center Riverhead, New York 2015, 2016
B.R.I.O. Excellence in the Arts Award,
Bronx Council on the Arts 2019, 2005, 2003, 1999, 1997, 1995, 1993, 1991, 1989
Residency – Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts, Amherst, VA 2019, 2007, 2003, 2001, 2000, 1998, 1996, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1991, 1988
Commission – Bronx Community College North Instructional Building 2008-2012
Commission – Lehman College, Office of the President 2007
Residency – Julia & David White Artist’s Colony, Costa Rica 2004
Commission – MTA Arts for Transit 2002-2007
Residency – Weir Farm Trust, Wilton, CT 2001 and 2002
Residency – Djerassi Artist’s Colony, Woodside, CA 2000
Residency – Villa Montalvo Artist’s Colony, Saratoga, CA 1999
Residency – Fundación Valparaíso, Almería, Spain 1997
Commission – CitiArts/New York Botanical Garden, 1994
Scholarship – New York Pastel Society 1992
Residency – Oberpfälzer Künsterhaus, Fronberg, Germany 1990
Louis Lozowick Award for Graphics 1989
Certificate of Excellence, Communication Arts Magazine 1988
CURRENT ART INSTRUCTION
Bernard and Ann Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York
Riverdale YM/YWHA
EDUCATION
School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
CURRICULUM VITAE
COLLECTIONS
COMMISSION & AWARDS
Commission – Fordham Hill Houses 2019
Residency – East End Arts Center Riverhead, New York 2015, 2016
B.R.I.O. Excellence in the Arts Award,
Bronx Council on the Arts 2019, 2005, 2003, 1999, 1997, 1995, 1993, 1991, 1989
Residency – Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts, Amherst, VA 2019, 2007, 2003, 2001, 2000, 1998, 1996, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1991, 1988
Commission – Bronx Community College North Instructional Building 2008-2012
Commission – Lehman College, Office of the President 2007
Residency – Julia & David White Artist’s Colony, Costa Rica 2004
Commission – MTA Arts for Transit
2002-2007
Residency – Weir Farm Trust, Wilton, CT 2001 and 2002
Residency – Djerassi Artist’s Colony, Woodside, CA 2000
Residency – Villa Montalvo Artist’s Colony, Saratoga, CA 1999
Residency – Fundación Valparaíso, Almería, Spain 1997
Commission – CitiArts/New York Botanical Garden, 1994
Scholarship – New York Pastel Society 1992
Residency – Oberpfälzer Künsterhaus, Fronberg, Germany 1990
Louis Lozowick Award for Graphics 1989
Certificate of Excellence, Communication Arts Magazine 1988
CURRENT ART INSTRUCTION
Bernard and Ann Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York
Riverdale YM/YWHA
EDUCATION
School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA