About

Daniel Phill was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. He received his MFA from Stanford University and his BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. 

Daniel Phill has transformed and reimagined his unique style of blurring the boundaries of abstraction and representation. Known mostly for his botanical  abstract imagery, his paintings bear his signature bold strokes and improvised gestures. Phill uses marks that are created on layer upon layer of thick, wet, viscous paint on canvas. His approach has been described as using an “unrehearsed expressionism” in an “anarchic manner.” 

Bill Scott, in Art in America Magazine, says "Phill’s style in his current series of floral paintings owe a great debt to abstract expressionism's fluidity and improvisational process. Not a trace of angst or elegiac feeling is to be found in these calmly sinuous paintings. Phill composes his paintings at the same time that he tries to dissolve the representational element of his images to create what could be called premier-coup abstraction."

First and foremost a colorist, Phill creates with fiery, saturated hues. Working in an Abstract Expressionist style, he pieces together organic shapes in his abstractions and teases images from splatters of paint. His canvases demonstrate an impressive control of his material. In large, loose gestures, he describes essential details - long, slender tendrils become reeds, pressed and flattened globs of paint turn into petals, and delicate veins emerge from colors bleeding together. 

Phill's paintings have been reviewed or published in: ARTnews; Art in America; New York Sun; California Home+Design; New Yorker; Los Angeles Times; Art & Antiques; Who's Who in the West; House Beautiful; Wall Street International; and Artweek, among others.

Daniel Phill has exhibited nationally and is in diverse public and private collections, such as: Achenbach Foundation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Citigroup; Clear Channel; De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University; Ernst & Young; First USA Bank; GTE; Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University; Hollins University Art Collection, Roanoke, VA; Kimberly Clark; Morgan Stanley; Nordstrom; Pfizer; Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose, CA; SAP America; Sharper Image; Sprint; Stanford University; Sutter Health; Texas A&M University; Tucson Museum of Art; UC San Diego Medical Center; and US Department of State, among others.