An Odyssey Guided by Three Principles: Daniel E. Greene (1934-2020)
knew at 5 years old that I wanted to be an artist,” said Daniel E. Greene. “All through my childhood I loved to draw and was comparatively skilled. When I was 18, I embarked full time on the lifelong journey of being an artist and began my immersion in the fascination of painting.” Anxious to begin his career as an artist, Greene left high school in his senior year, moved to Miami, Florida, and found a job sketching portraits for tourists for $5 and $10 a piece. After saving enough money, he set out for New York City to enroll at the Art Students League, where he would learn and grow as an artist and eventually become a teacher.
In the beginning of his career, Greene faced many of the normal struggles of an artist, trying to make ends meet while mastering painting skills. He met the financial challenge head on by deciding that he would work just enough hours to cover his necessities and devote the remainder of his time to learning the fundamentals of painting. In time, he was awarded two grants that enabled him more time to devote to painting, and the work he created during that period led him to become a self-sufficient artist.
His painting career was based on his own identified principles of development that began with acquiring fundamental painting skills, then becoming familiar with a broad history of art, and finally developing one’s own style and ideas. Creating over 700 works of art in his lifetime, Greene was also an avid teacher. For many years, he taught painting at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design in New York. Then in 1980, he began traveling and teaching portrait workshops all over the United States and Europe, as well as summer classes in his North Salem, New
York, studio. Over his lifetime, Greene taught over 10,000 students in person and reached an additional 100,000 artists through his books and instructions videos.
In addition to creating work that was influenced by his own visual experiences, including themes from the carnival, auction houses and the city subway, Greene was commissioned to paint portraits of leaders in business, medicine, sports and public service. On his commissioned works, he once said, “All my portrait commissions are a combination of restrictions; size and medium, formal or informal, balanced by the freshness of each new portrait subject. Resolving the problems of restraints in order to create one’s best work
I find continuously stimulating.”
From a 5-year-old aspiring artist to his last day, at 86 years old, Greene lived the life he intended, and in his own words one can hear the lifelong passion he had for painting. He said, “When working on my own pictures I am aware of the fascinating challenges and extremely high standards that are found in great paintings and I find this endlessly intriguing. The visual world and the mechanics of translating into paint these images is a completely seductive involvement. The fascination and challenges of painting are a neverending source of personal satisfaction and excitement.”