"In our current situation we're not quite at that breaking point, but painting in this time of quarantine can provide a space for the mind to travel when the body can not," Daniel Heidkamp points out for Art in Uncertain Times, as he remarks on the impact of the pandemic on his art process. I recently saw some of his pieces featured in Half Gallery's Dallas Art Fair presentation as well as the Under Glass group exhibition, and they instantly teleported me to a sun baked French Riviera which brought to mind the Croatian coast where I grew up. We found the artist at his house up in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, where he decamped from NYC during this time.
"I decided to focus more on my travels in France last fall and my ongoing Riviera series, how my return trip to the region had to be postponed, and the nature of travel/landscape in these times," In that sense, I see this as much about what I'm *not* doing right now, a sense of longing or loss due to the pandemic, but also new importance on the ground I was able to cover before everything went crazy." Rather than report on a new routine and the ways that the lockdown has affected daily life, the artist decided to take a different path for this series and reflect on the life he/we used to have and now missing dearly. 
"The ease of international travel before this time was something that we perhaps took for granted," the artist wrote about the globetrotting that had become a way of life for many of us. "And now, in these new circumstances, the places we've been to are taking on a new meaning." Heidkamp had planned an extended stay in Europe after his spring show at a Genevan gallery was inevitably cancelled, excited about revisiting the Cote d’Azur, the wellspring for his Riviera series paintings, which were shown with Loyal and Half Gallery last season.
"While completing works from my Riviera series just as the pandemic and lock-down were taking hold, I questioned what does it mean to make a sunny landscape painting at this time? I thought of the Fauves and Post-Impressionist artists who are a big influence on this series - their bright colors and 'joie de vivre' spirit was partially snuffed out by the onset of war. In our current situation we're not quite at that breaking point, but painting in this time of quarantine can provide a space for the mind to travel when the body cannot. And I think looking to nature, looking to the land, provides a sense of foundation and permanence when so much is uncertain."
"Song of Sugiton is part of my ongoing Riviera series inspired by my recent travels to the coastal villages and rocky landscapes around Marseille, France. This region, known for its vibrant color and immense beauty, was a central location for 19th-century impressionism and fauvism, as well as the site that inspired the earliest cubist paintings. My goal when visiting these fabled grounds is to rediscover the sites of some of art history's most famous paintings and find some new inspiration all my own. When visiting sites for painting, I often like to engage some 'En Plein Air' art-making and in this case, I arrived with oil pastels and a sketchbook. In my rendering of the crevices along the sunlit cliffs, the bending umbrella pine trees, and the sparkling turquoise waters, I am seeking to find the fulcrum point between realism and abstraction for which this land inspires. The way the Mediterranean sunlight bounces around the limestone rocks and deep blue fjords in person brings out surprising prismatic shades that even photography can't truly perceive. But these colorful effects are everything to a painter."
"I consider this region a crucial nexus along my march through painting history starting in New York and Central Park, then the upstate region of the Hudson River School, Cape Ann, the Barbizon in France, the German countryside of Friedrich, Yosemite, and now the Cote d'Azur of the French Riviera. This area is most beautiful and inspiring, and there is a uniqueness and variety about the scenery, light, climate, color, that allows a painter to push the palette very hard and still be true to nature. With this work, I'm definitely going for an element of realism, yet the color while inspired by nature is at times pushed and saturated. For me, the color comes from another type of nature - the nature of the oil paint itself and the authoritative palettes of the early French painters. My goal is to not work against the paint, to not dull it, or mix it down into muddy earth tones, but to keep it saturated and vibrant. From studying earlier paintings and then visiting where they were made, I begin to understand the language of how to convert what one actually sees in real life when visiting the Cote d'Azur into explosive and colorful paintings."
"The aspect of this series that seems newly relevant, is that with the early French painters' Fauvists/Neo-Impressionist, the 'Joie de Vivre' element of their work was partially cut short by the onset of WW1. For instance, Andre Derain the most colorful of them all spent the latter part of his career making grim almost German expressionist portraits. My thought was as a painter working in times of relative peace, I could happily return to France and continue where they left off with the colorful sails boats and bending trees of the Mediterranean. However, now with the pandemic, this might feel odd. On the other hand, the escapist idea of traveling through art feels relevant. I am continuing my voyage with the spirit of an 'En Plein Air' painter, but for the time being doing so by looking at books, and watching travel videos on YouTube."
Text compiled by Sasha Bogojev
Photos courtesy the artist, Loyal, Stockholm and Half Gallery, New York
