Danny Heller

Usonia Afternoon

2024

Danny Heller paints the reality of the American environment: how structures once revered for their groundbreaking ideas in design and social planning have been perpetuated and how they have been forgotten. Primarily focusing on the nation’s mid-century identity, Heller plays with lighting, dramatic angles, and specific colors to form engaging paintings that capture architectural elements. He uses a realistic style to paint those moments where design and environment come together harmoniously in order to showcase the compelling characteristics of these spaces. In some ways, Heller acts as a documentarian of an endangered architectural culture in America. However, these paintings are a bit more personal, as they tend to focus on locations from the artist's childhood or at least slices of an era recounted to him from his parents’ and grandparents’ times. By painting these historically and personally significant scenes, Heller reconnects with a presumably by-gone time period whose remnants actually still exist. Because especially in an age that values constant change, when the past is demolished to make way for the brand new, we are at risk of losing our collective history. Without which, we leave ourselves devoid of a foundation to build our future on.