Our world has gone mad since the 2016 US elections and we are all terrified. We are shellshocked with betrayal. We are filled with fear for our brothers and sisters who can not defend themselves and the violations of a Constitution that threaten all our ancestors gave their lives for. We fear for our planet. I get it. My heart hurts, it’s hard to breathe.

I am a person that holds creativity as one of the highest forms of enlightenment. It is easy to want to give up my daily sharing of artwork and its impact in this time of chaos. Without beauty, empathy and manners we will never survive this.

Without art, we have no modern world.

Artists design our clothes, the packaging our food comes in, the tools in our kitchens and in the garage. Artists design our furniture, and our homes (architecture is one of the fine arts).

Artists design toys and the silly costumes people dress their pets in for Halloween or when its cold. Artists design our video games and the look of the movies we watch. Artists design special effects.

Do not think the tools of the artist can replace the artist.

These are just a few of the jobs that come from fine art training. Art schools (legitimate ones) teach structure, perspective, the chemistry of color, design, composition but most of all develop the area of the brain associated with problem solving and constructive reasoning.


Featured Image: Handcrafted crayons made from Beeswax


Uriél Danā at the Getty Museum
At the Getty Museum

Uriél Danā has been honored for her work as a fine artist, writer, and lecturer for more than four decades. Her oils, gouache, and lost wax bronze work have been shown in 12 countries on 4 continents. She is a former U.S. State Department Ambassador to the Arts under the Arts America Program.

Her oil paintings and drawings are included in dozens of private, corporate, and celebrity art collections. In October 2015 two of her paintings were selected for the Carousel de Louvre exhibition in Paris, and she was included in the catalogue Modern Art Masters in Complex Musée du Louvre.  Her work was included in the landmark exhibit “The Otherworld” (link) featuring the history of Visionary Art. The exhibit spanned 2021-2022 at the Roland Gallery in Los Angeles’ California Lutheran College.  From 2022 to 2023 one of her drawings was featured in the Small Works exhibit at the MEAM (European Museum of Modern Art) in Barcelona, Spain.

After serving in the United States Air Force, Uriél attended Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, studied Sculpture, Museum Management, & Art History at College of Marin, Kentfield, and apprenticed 4 yrs with California Surrealist Master Painter, Gage Taylor in Marin. In addition to her own art career, she was known for her painting collaborations with the late Gage Taylor under the name Taylor-Dana.

Uriél curates two fine art streams on BlueSky: of Contemporary Figurative Artists and Japanese Woodblock Prints.



Top