Draft:Dan Camp

Daniel Martin Camp (born June 13, 1947) is an American artist known for his portraiture featuring stylized subjects immersed in otherworldly, spiritual, or mythic-laden contexts.

His paintings are inspired by a multitude of artistic sources, including the impressionism of William Merritt Chase, the figural realism of Thomas Eakins and George Bellows, and the psychological density of David Salle.

Early life and education
Born in Berkely, California, Camp earned his Bachelor of Arts at Principia College, in Elsah, Illinois in 1969. After a stint at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he completed his Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, San Diego in 1976.

Teaching career
Camp joined the faculty at Mira Costa College in Oceanside, California in 1977, where he served for thirteen years.

Artwork
Afterwards, he focused exclusively on developing his body of work in oil and watercolor and exhibiting regularly across public and private art galleries in Southern California, with forays into filmmaking.

Camp's paintings are frequently imbued with sexual tension, the subtext heightened through oppositions in foreground and background, point of view, and pose—the gaze of the enigmatic, often shadowed or distant male in relationship to females alternatingly supernatural, seductive, vulnerable, pensive, or saintly. The sensual themes are often enhanced via placing the human archetypes amid a signature palette of red, green, violet and gold, mysterious fogs that enwrap the figures, hovering tree groves, or virginal seascapes.

American art critic Robert Pincus published a series of reviews of Camp's work, noting in one that "'Camp may be a realist when it comes to the human figure; Thomas Eakins and George Bellows come to mind. But when his scenes, in total, don't hold up a mirror to nature. They read like an idiosyncratic brew of memories, dreams and desires, hinting at story but blocking any search for resolution'."

Camp's filmmaking comprises brooding reimaginations of classic scenes from the works of San Diego novelist Raymond Chandler, including the Triology of “PM1 The Dago Jade”, “PM2 The Dago Jade” , and “PM3 EO11”. A five-part series Kid Rio through Kid Rio 5. Camp added to his corpus with cinéma-vérité pieces on the Southern California surf culture with Kid Rio Productions CEO Paulo Carvalho AKA Kid Rio, including Seaside Reef and Del Mar interviews in "Kingshighway - Rob Machado and Joel Tudor” with surfers Rob Machado and Joel Tudor.  A fictionalized poetic homage to Miki Dora titled “The Story of Miki Dora”.

Exhibitions

 * San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, 1971
 * National Watercolor Society, 1972–1975
 * Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ 1976
 * Arizona State University at Tempe, Tempe, AZ, 1977
 * Cygnus Gallery, San Diego, CA, 1981
 * Anuska Gallery, San Diego, CA, 1986
 * Gallery 129, La Jolla, CA, 1986
 * Lyceum Theater, San Diego, CA, 1987