Many experiences besides formal art schooling have combined to shape my style and choice of media in my art. I have been a machinist, sign painter, carpenter, teacher and an art museum librarian.

My painted metal sculptures in particular are an outgrowth of the hard edged compositional style I developed over many years of painting and printmaking combined with my training as a machinist.

As art media, printmaking and especially metal sculpture forces an artist to be very deliberative in composition. This suits me well as I have always had a distrust of spontaneity in art. I prefer to analyze and agonize over the placement and nature of every element in a design, not just when doing metal fabrication but also when I take pencil to paper, which is where all of these works begin.  The fact that it is easier to make a change in a composition with an eraser than it is with a band saw, welder and drill press compels me to calculate my design and content and not depend upon those visual “happy accidents” which  expressionist  painters count on.

Artwork that is minimalist enough to reveal itself entirely with just a glance might be valid in theory, but to my mind, merely a decorative object. In a short while, those works become as ignored and invisible as the furniture we live with. I try to create art complex enough that it can be visited again and again, always  revealing something new. In designing my work, I concern myself with the shape of the voids between the pieces as much as with the surfaces that I paint. I want all of a composition to hold the viewer's interest, whether in a pure abstraction or in those works that include realistic objects that have their own beautiful geometry more easily seen when those objects are taken out of context. 
I strive to give the viewer  images with a bit of mystery, that can not be taken in without conscious examination.

I hope you enjoy viewing my work as much as I enjoy making it.                DANIEL ROACHE

BASF Corporation

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan

Butterworth Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan                      

City of East Lansing, Michigan

Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Ferris State University, Big Rapids, Michigan

First of America Bank Corporation

Frisch’s Restaurants Incorporated

Grand Rapids Community College

Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Herberts - Standox, Corporation, Wuppertal, Germany

Hutzel Hospital, Detroit, Michigan

Law Weathers & Richardson, PC, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Licking County Memorial Hospital, Newark, Ohio

Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois
Metro Health Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Michigan National Bank Corporation

Munson Medical Center, Traverse City, Michigan                  

Petoskey, Michigan Public Library
St. Mary’s Mercy Medical Center, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Salt Lake Community College, Jordan, Utah            

Spectrum Health Systems Corporation

Tampa Children’s Medical Services
Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, Petoskey, Michigan

University of Michigan Hospitals

BORN

1954   Detroit, Michigan
 
EDUCATION / APPRENTICESHIP    

1980 -1986    Studied painting with artist Karl Staber

1975 -1980    Studied art history while on the staff of the Detroit Institute of Arts

1974 -1975    Trained and employed as a skilled machinist and toolmaker

1973 -1975    Studied art and art history at Detroit area colleges

1965 -1972    Studied drawing and painting with artist Ruth Loring -Janes

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