Dan Attoe’s paintings depict natural wonders—waterfalls, beaches, mountains, rocky cliffs, over-sized forests—populated by tiny figures spouting even tinier diaristic missives, painted in silver and culled from the artist’s stream of consciousness. The miniature humans disrupt the grandeur of nature with their small stature and utterances. His drawings share the same concerns but inverted—the phrases and disconnected images are larger and often cartoonish, creating small-scaled narrative vignettes. Attoe makes a small drawing every day that he keeps for himself—slightly larger drawings and paintings expand upon this practice. John Motley observes in The Portland Oregonian, “Multiple drawing styles reinforce the varying perspectives on youth and childhood, from pure, storybook fantasy to a less-innocent complexity, where fear and sexuality mingle.” Attoe said of his work, “The landscape can be enjoyed for its beauty, and the disparity between it and the figures, but it also exists in service to these contemporary people in funny or ordinary clothing saying everyday things about e-mails or engaging in interpersonal clumsiness.”
His first novel “The Taking Tree” was published in May 2024. Attoe has always maintained text as part of his work, and studied writing at The Writer’s Workshop while he was obtaining his MFA at The University of Iowa. “The Taking Tree” follows a main character torn between two lives. One life explores the complexity of the contemporary art business, the other follows a trail through rural, working-class America. The book is a dark, colorful tale about an ancient destructive part of human nature and the difficulty of confronting our roots. Attoe’s first foray into the novel has been met with rave reviews.
Dan Attoe has had solo shows and has been in numerous group shows in galleries and museums across the United States and Europe. He worked with and was part of the inspiration for a line of clothing by fashion designer Adam Kimmel in 2011. His work has been recently featured in The Birdsong Project, a series of collaborative musical and artistic projects that supports the Audubon Society. Dan Attoe’s work has been written about and featured in Frieze Magazine, Art in America, Artforum, The Los Angeles Times, Art Review, The Journal, Flash Art, Berlin Art Journal, PAPERMAG and The New York Times. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin in 1998 and his MFA from the University of Iowa in 2004. He is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago. Born in 1975 in Bremerton, Washington, Attoe grew up in parts of Washington, Idaho, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and now lives and works in Washougal, Washington.