The Moment Before Waking

Dan May is a fine artist currently living in Chicago, IL. A native of Rochester, NY, Dan attended Syracuse University where he achieved a BFA and began to immediately pursue his artistic interests. As a modern narrative painter, May cultivates a rich texture of the surreal and mysterious in his highly original flowing style. His detail-intensive works have become widely recognized for their dreamlike ability to transcend the natural states of space and time – mostly due to his usage of a very finely honed usage of line. May’s propensity for using hair as a metaphor has become a focal point that he has built on to speak about larger aspects of humanity as well as the dream world, and gives a strong nod to his progressive personal growth and evolution as an artist. Dan has exhibited his paintings to consistently growing interest in the gallery world and is enthusiastically held in high regard by collectors the world over. May spends the majority of his time in the studio, painting new wonders or challenging his lovely wife Kendal to unscheduled debates on pro wrestling theory. His paintings have graced the pages of international publications as Hi Fructose Magazine, DPI and Communication Founded In 1991, originally as Copro/Nason Fine Arts began as an entity to curate art exhibitions at museums and local galleries and publish lithograph & silk-screen prints. The first contemporary cutting edge artists that Copro/Nason worked with were Mark Ryden, Robert Williams, Big Daddy Roth, Shag, Pizz, Von Dutch, Coop and many others. In 1999 Copro/Nason Gallery was opened In Culver City and soon transcended the limits of Lowbrow. By incorporating gothic-inspired visons of fantasy, horror, and surrealistic excesses into an ambitious program, mixing acknowledged masters with newer talents such as Sas Christian, Amy Sol, Audrey Kawasaki, Lori Earley and many others Copro/Nason soon began to take shape. Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the paint is diluted (with water) or modified with acrylic gels, media, or pastes, the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor or an oil painting, or have its own unique characteristics not attainable with other media.