Daphne Arthur


Daphne Arthur is a contemporary artist, who currently lives and works in New York City. She is currently teaching at the Harlem School of Arts and the Ashcan Art Studio. Her artwork focuses on a combination of painting, sculpture, drawing, and uses smoke, paint, clay, and collage.

Biography and education

Daphne Arthur was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1984. Growing up with Trinidadian parents in Venezuela put strain and tension on her growing up. When she was in high school, she saw herself as a visual artist through an epiphany while she was painting a mural. In 2007, she went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to get her Bachelors of Fine Art and then to the Yale School of Art to get her Masters of Fine Arts in 2009. While getting her bachelors, she received residency in 2007 for the Ox-Bow School of Art and also received the American Academy of Rome, Affiliated Fellowship while she was in graduate school. After getting her BFA and MFA, Arthur participated in multiple group exhibitions and solo exhibitions. Over the years, she has been a curator, artist and designer, a teaching assistant, and a teacher. She is currently working at the Harlem School of the Arts assisting with high school and pre-college portfolio preparation, and at the Ashcan Art Studio in New York, as a painting and drawing teacher.

Teaching Experience

After receiving her MFA and BFA, Daphne Arthur has had multiple teaching experiences over the course of 2009 to present, they include:
Daphne Arthur features multiple of her artworks on her , but some of her artworks include:

Paintings

https://daphnearthur.com/artwork/4365803-AKA.html AKA 2016 Ain't Killin' Anyone (2016)

Medium: Painting, 38"x21" - oil on canvas
Varied, broken tones. Dull, flat colors. Yellow, black AKA gun placed in the center of the photo. Pink flowers surrounding the gun, with black lines representing the stems and outlining the flowers.
This oil painting by Daphne Arthur is an auctioned art piece created for Trayron Martin, who was a junior at Dr. Michael M. Krop High School, who was fatally shot when he was visiting his father's fiancée and her son at their town home in Sanford, Florida. Arthur created this in response to news of the gun that killed the 17 year old being auctioned off, and planned on using the money for teen services.
Daphne and partner, whose name is not explicitly said on the auction page, decided that painting a gun that has not been used to kill an innocent child should be auctioned and sold for a good cause.

Installations and Sculptures

https://daphnearthur.com/section/463751-El-Juego-del-Tra-Tra-Tra.html El Juego del Tra Tra (2009)

Medium: Wall Piece, 53"x54.5"x31" - canvas, wax, latex, oil, paint, spray paint, wire mesh, fur, plastic, white cloth, nails
This art piece by Daphne Arthur stretches from the wall to the floor, there is a person stretching out or climbing out of the wall and reaching for the floor. The piece on the floor does not have a set shape. The overall color palette is overall flat colors and there are many different art mediums put together.
Daphne Arthur uses ideas of the human form's futility, impermanence, and ethereality as the embodiment of this art piece. According to the gallery of Young Latina Artists Exhibition, this art piece is meant to be "about life and its incapacity to exist without the consequence or existent of death and decay."

Smoke Drawings

https://daphnearthur.com/artwork/2620356-Catching-Butterflies.html Catching Butterflies (2017)

Medium: Painting, 51.75"x42" - smoke and pastel on paper
This smoke drawing by Daphne Arthur illuminates a feeling of apocalyptic desolation through this piece, as the scene depicted includes blurred image of the tree stretching from the outside inside the building and the broken glass on the window. The blur of the smoke creates a haunting and abandoned feeling.

Exhibitions

One Person Exhibitions

Illustrator

In the year of 2017, Daphne Arthur illustrated the graphic novel and designed the set in The Bench, A Homeless Love Story.
The Bench, A Homeless Love Story is written based on true stores and real people, by Robert Galinsky, who is a social activist, playwright, actor, poet, coach, etc. The Bench explores the stories of homeless characters dealing with the breakout of AIDS in the 1980s. Arthur contributes with his graphic novel adaption and designed sets in multiple of the theatre productions.