Af­ter the loss of her fa­ther, De Avion Daniel be­gan draw­ing as a means of ex­press­ing and pro­cess­ing her feel­ings - that was around the age of six. Daniel fell in love with this new­found form of ex­pres­sion and start­ed train­ing heav­i­ly from a very ten­der age. Her in­volve­ment in the field has not stopped since.

A res­i­dent of Ed­in­burgh 500, Daniel at­tend­ed draw­ing class­es where she was taught fig­u­ra­tive and car­toon draw­ings. Dur­ing her high school years, she pur­sued Vi­su­al Arts at CSEC and placed first among her peers, cul­ti­vat­ing and spark­ing her in­ter­est in dif­fer­ent ex­pres­sive forms. “I man­aged to sus­tain and de­vel­op my skills in my 20 years of life where I am now a mixed me­dia painter” she said.

So what do her pieces look like? She ex­plained, “My paint­ings range from sur­re­al­ism, ab­stract to land­scapes and are pre­dom­i­nant­ly acrylics on can­vas and mixed me­dia pieces. I have a fond­ness for paint­ings with tex­ture and this ex­pres­sive form (mixed me­dia) al­lows me to avow this feel­ing.” Es­sen­tial­ly, mixed me­dia art refers to a vi­su­al art form that com­bines a va­ri­ety of me­dia/ma­te­ri­als in a sin­gle art­work.

Daniel in­cor­po­rates dif­fer­ent ma­te­ri­als from the en­vi­ron­ment in most of her paint­ings to re­lay emo­tions, colour, form and tex­ture while telling a sto­ry. “I reck­on that art is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the artist and the en­vi­ron­ment. My en­er­getic and emo­tion­al­ly charged paint­ings are in­flu­enced by three en­ti­ties that are of great im­por­tance to me - time, space and dreams” she ex­plained. “I cher­ish the con­nec­tion with the lit­er­al mean­ings of each word thus por­tray­ing them in my work, for ex­am­ple, the sym­bol of the clock or moon helps re­lay these en­ti­ties.More­over, hav­ing grown up in a house­hold with strong, in­de­pen­dent women as role mod­els, a re­cent theme in my paint­ings is the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the pow­er­ful and the vul­ner­a­ble in hu­man, in par­tic­u­lar - fe­male na­ture.”

Cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a BSc in Bi­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, Daniel’s in­ten­tion is to merge her sci­en­tif­ic plane with her vi­su­al arts side by work­ing to­wards the man­u­fac­tur­ing of eco-friend­ly art ma­te­ri­als. How does she man­age school and her hob­by? “I still man­age to find time for my craft and my busi­ness be­cause cre­at­ing is some­thing that comes nat­u­ral­ly for me.”

Her love for the field has got­ten her sev­er­al op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the mu­sic and fash­ion in­dus­try. Daniel has col­lab­o­rat­ed and worked along­side es­teemed pro­duc­ers, mu­si­cians and de­sign­ers, cre­at­ing wear­able art and in­te­grat­ing her skills as a painter for a mu­sic video. “I have worked along­side pro­duc­ers - Pre­ci­sion Pro­duc­tions and Bad­John Re­pub­lic - and cre­at­ed hand-paint­ed, wear­able art for Zadd and East­man. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, I work on com­mis­sion paint­ings and hand-paint­ed cloth­ing for clients quite of­ten. Many of my paint­ings that were cre­at­ed on can­vas have been re­paint­ed on dress­es, t-shirts and den­im and are sold. I’ve al­so used the hu­man body as a can­vas, paint­ing well-known car­toon char­ac­ters.” For the past few months, the artist has been as­sist­ing fifth form stu­dents from var­i­ous schools with their School-based as­sess­ments (SBA’s) for Vi­su­al Arts. She is al­so get­ting ready to launch her first art class for stu­dents be­tween the ages of eight and 13. The class will run for a du­ra­tion of eight weeks.

Daniel gets her in­spi­ra­tion from Span­ish sur­re­al­ist painter Sal­vador Dali. She not­ed, “His sur­re­al of eight­ism pieces in­spire me; in par­tic­u­lar, his paint­ing ‘The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry’. El­e­ments of his work can be re­flect­ed in some of my art­work or themes thus em­pha­sis­ing or link­ing time, space and dreams.” How­ev­er, she added that a ma­jor part of her in­spi­ra­tion al­so stems from things around her. “See­ing in­spir­ing art of dif­fer­ent ex­pres­sive forms, some­times see­ing a good ex­hi­bi­tion, read­ing an ar­ti­cle, even lis­ten­ing to mu­sic or see­ing a movie can have a great im­pact. It gives ideas and in­spi­ra­tion to cre­ate. I was for­tu­nate enough to trav­el to Art Basel Switzer­land last year and the art ex­hi­bi­tion has im­pact­ed and fur­ther ex­pand­ed my ideas as a cre­ative.”

So how does the young artist feel when her work is ap­pre­ci­at­ed and ap­plaud­ed? “When some­one ap­pre­ci­ates what I am do­ing, it mo­ti­vates and in­spires me a lot. It means that my work is im­por­tant, and I am con­tribut­ing to some­thing mean­ing­ful and in­spi­ra­tional for oth­ers. In­spir­ing oth­ers in­spire me to cre­ate more. Ob­serv­ing small de­tails of every­day life can in­spire a lot - I love ob­serv­ing the sur­round­ing world, light, move­ments, peo­ple, an­i­mals and na­ture.”

Daniel hopes to be recog­nised re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as an in­ge­nious cre­ative. She said, “I al­so en­vi­sion my­self us­ing my plat­form or cre­ative spot­light not on­ly as an artist but as an in­spi­ra­tion to help young pro­fes­sion­als, all while chang­ing a gen­er­a­tion’s out­look on art. My dri­ve is cre­at­ing con­tem­po­rary art for the younger gen­er­a­tion, in hopes that they can re­late and ap­pre­ci­ate fine art in a world where every­thing is now dig­i­tal.”