Artistic postman with a bagful of great ideas
talks to artist Danny Vincent Smith, whose art has its own unique style.
While relaxing in my brother’s garden, sipping a glass of wine, we were chatting about the different things going on in Bantry.
The sunshine was streaming down over the perfectly formed mountains, highlighting vibrant shades of red, pink, blue, purple, yellow and green and I finally understood what makes Bantry such a beautiful place for Willie and his family to live.
I looked at him and said, it really makes me want to start painting again, it’s a painter’s paradise.
He asked me if I had heard of a postman called Danny Smith, who is also an artist.
My ears pricked up and I thought that would make an interesting story, so I googled his art to get a handle on what type of painter he is.
While strolling around town, listening to the magnificent music courtesy of West Cork Chamber Music Festival, I walked in the door of Forest & Flock, a beautifully designed craft shop /art gallery right in the middle of town and was greeted by a rather large painting of a musician playing a cello.
Music to my ears, so to speak, as I also play cello and I thought, this is Danny Smith’s style, just as well it’s a male cellist or it would have been in the back of my car on its way to a new home in Kinsale.
On walking around the shop, I found numerous pieces of his work, each one more interesting than the other.
Great range of subjects
His subjects ranged from a guy cycling a bike to musicians playing in the local pub; I had a great insight into Danny Smith’s soul. Like myself, he was a lover of music but, in particular, trad and classical.
What captivated me most about his work was his wonderful ability to capture his subjects in such fine detail while using short brush strokes and vibrant colours to make his subjects centre stage and really come to life on canvas.
While chatting to Danny over a cup of coffee at De Barras, I found him exactly as I thought I would — interesting, engaging, humorous, very easy to relate to, with an element of shyness about his work.
We possessed the same type of wit, loved people, and if I were to describe him in a nutshell, a talented man who simply loves people, traditional music and had a terrible hatred of all things false ... we clicked from the start!
Danny is the local postman, a self-taught artist with an enormous flair for capturing his subjects right through to the very core of their being.
His paintings, mostly painted in acrylics, draw you right in through vibrancy of colour.
He travels around Ireland on his motorbike with his easel on tow to capture the wonderful landscapes of our beautiful country, but for Danny, there’s no place like home, the wanderer always returns home to the picturesque landscapes and people of West Cork.
He is driven by the desire to capture the play on light, tone, colour and atmosphere the Irish landscape has to offer.
His subjects vary from musicians playing fiddles in the local pubs to trawlers painted in bright reds and blues, docked in the harbour to chickens roaming the farmyards of West Cork.
His work encompasses Irish culture as depicted in seascapes, lifescapes, people and animals.
He is a self-taught artist, drawing and painting from a young age and his style has evolved from many years of practice.
He is a devoted family man who goes home each evening after an early start delivering letters to his local communities and goes to work in his studio to paint the catch of the day.
I would have thought somebody with that talent would have come from an artistic background, but — he reassured me — he is the first to take to the easel and canvas.
Artistic talent, however, does flow through the family veins as Danny and other members of the family are keen musicians.
Unfortunately, Danny doesn’t give art classes but, who knows, he might make a small exception!
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