Dan also works in sculpture and has had a marble piece recently installed in Auckland.
Neither Dan nor Katerina are New Zealanders by birth - he being from Exeter and she from Prague. They continue to travel, often to Czechoslovakia, UK and Europe.
"I grew up in Wellington from the age of 12, moved to Marlborough and studied at a branch of Nelson Polytechnic. In 1995 I studied under Bruce Phillips, who turns out to be my neighbour up here. During that time I got a job painting a mural on a fence ... then I met some mural painters doing it full time and did some work with them during the holidays."
From there he was commissioned by a local council and his mural career began.
"I've been pretty much doing it ever since."
In Whanganui he has painted a building in Drews Ave as well as the Rangiora St Dairy and a number of the Chorus cabinets around town. He shared the latter work with Simon Ormerod of Cracked Ink. Dan's painting is big, colourful and has depth. His portfolio of documented work is vast and varied. One of his works "in progress" is on a large canvas in his studio.
"I would call it abstract expressionism," he says. "I work with shape, expression, colour and movement. That canvas spent a year of its life as a drop sheet, then I cleaned it up, pinned it to the wall and started to look into it."
In abstract shapes you can see possibilities of "things" appearing - such as birds. "Whatever I see first I will start to render it up.
"It's like a Rorschach test where you look into an inkblot. It's much the same except you're rendering the thing up to what you see, so in that sense it's surrealism. You're starting from the point of abstraction and working through."
He sees much of his work as the results of a search of his subconscious mind.
Some images appear frequently from stencils Dan has made by hand. With constant use the image blurs and deteriorates into new forms. One is an old typewriter.
"It's a machine for writing; a tool for another art form."
Dan's paintings are a mix of abstractions and realistic images, drawing viewers into specific points on the canvas and leading them on a guided tour around the painting. The work he executed in Prague has elements of architecture, statues and large, predatory birds. He and Katerina lived in a part of Prague where people repaired statues.
"They had an exhibition space and I'd go there and sketch bits of gargoyle and random things."
The texture of stone in the paintings is tangible.
Dan can verbalise what he does. Consider the following about a work in progress:
"It's doing what I want it to do in that it's got a fierce kind of energy and it's wild and really expressive. It's gooey and a little bit unnerving and sort of existential."
The painting he describes is also comfortable to view.
"I'm not intellectualising it, nor coming from the point of view where I know what I want before I do it."
His murals, in contrast, are planned and executed with draughtsman-like efficiency and skill. "The murals I'll keep doing but I'd like to inject a little more expressive chaos into them."
There is architecture and design in his DNA but he has ventured beyond that into various art forms, including ceramics, something he'd like to return to at some stage.
Their house is filled with art, some executed by daughter Maria, who shows considerable promise, says Dan. One of Dan's pieces, a large canvas called Milk on Eggs, takes pride of place on a wall. The title refers to some of the content and is a nod to Spike Milligan.
His subjects are sourced from all over the world, souvenirs of travels and the result of an eye trained to see the possibility of a painting.
The titles of his work are also inspired.
"The title gives it another angle," says Dan. You'll never see one of his paintings labelled 'Untitled'.
