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- Aug 5, 2023
- 2 min read

Daniel Mullen and Perception of Reality

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SATURDAY EVENING POST

August 5th, 2023

DANIEL MULLEN, Pulse No.15, Acrylic on linen, 2020, 23.5 x 19.5 in.

DANIEL MULLEN, Pulse No.16, Acrylic on linen, 2020, 23.5 x 19.5 in.

“The question of sense perception is not limited to how we might perceive light, darkness, form, and color. We subsist in a precarious environment, in an era of mass digitization. How might our visual and emotional sensitivities be shifting as we find ourselves flowing between our physical environment and the techno-sphere, aided in part by back-lit digital devices?”

DANIEL MULLEN, Circling the Form, Acrylic on linen, 2020, 57 x 55 in

“My work happens to translate very well into a digital image — so well in fact that it can be mistaken for being a digital rendering in the first place. I am very fascinated by this when the work is seen in the physical. All of this creates a presence and perception that is the antithesis of how the work operates digitally. But maybe this tension between the physical and the digital illustrates a broader question about our perception of reality.”

DANIEL MULLEN, Pulse No. 30, Acrylic on linen, 2020, 23.5 x 19.5 in.

DANIEL MULLEN, Pulse No. 32, Acrylic on linen, 2020, 23.5 x 19.5 in.

“I approach my canvas with a spatial awareness for constructing the image as if it had a physical real world existence. This attitude towards paint is one of bending it to my will as if the image was being carved out of stone. So the resulting image shifts back and forth between solidity and a fleeting moment of consciousness. The individual planes that add up to the whole are often in themselves fragile and unstable, leading to a contradiction and friction between the proposed reality of the canvas and the constructed world around us. This for me creates a parallel to the exploration of fleeting thoughts and memories. Created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, if there is a narrative, it is the narrative of the viewer, I merely offer a title and an image.”