Daniel Craig (Born in 1957) was born in Mankato MN. In 1977, at the age of 20 years, he traveled 80 miles north to Minneapolis where he began his formal art education at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. For the first time, Craig devoted all his creative talent to drawing and painting. Inspired by his passion for the Old Masters, the artist began to build up a unique painting technique he describes as “Natural Idealism.” Craig creates in his pictures a world not entirely real, but is tied to the natural world in a special way. A technique in which forms are perfect and light is permeated with magic, but all still existing within the realm if reality. He creates pictures scented with emotion, symbolism, and culture. With one foot in each door, he creates a space he would also love to be in.
While he was a student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Craig’s eyes were quickly drawn to the paintings of the Flemish masters of the 15th century, like Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Hans Memling, and Jan van Eyck. Their dignified symbolic expression and marvelous attention to detail captured a timeless sense of reality. His commissions range from on and off Broadway musicals, to The New York City Opera and to HBO. The Minnesota Zoological Gardens and the New York Botanical Garden have employed his skill along with Fortune 500 companies such as The New York Stock Exchange, ESPN, Morgan Stanley and many others.
