Adam Dant

Adam Dant watches life constantly when he writes and draws. From 1995, every weekday for 5 years Dant’s observations and art were most readily encountered through his curious nom de plume in Donald Parsnips Daily Journal. Dant’s use of historical research and the influence of his literary background; Voltaire, Pope, Swift and Borges, continues in his current large scale sepia ink drawings. Dant’s understanding of architectural detail and traditional printmaking techniques is emphatic in his drawings, maps, charts and most recently in his famous trompe l’oeil library and ceiling commissions. Dant’s investigations into “the interconnectedness of everything” and the arcane, earnest and often quite bizarre “belief systems” that append themselves to such a concept are the artists starting point for large “sepia ink-on-paper” drawings which create “psycho-histories”, “Monuments” and Panoramas of colliding histories and fictions”.

Dant was born in Cambridge in 1967. He gained first class honors in graphic design at Liverpool School of Art, a post-graduate degree in fine art print-making at the Royal College of Art as well as studying print-making at MS University, Faculty of Fine Art in Baroda, India. Awards and scholarships include; 1991 Hochschule die Kunste Berlin Erasmus Scholarship, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris Studio Award. 1992-93 British School at Rome, Rome Scholar in Printmaking. 1993-94 Eremo di S. Catarina Isola d’Elba Italy Residency. Dant won The Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2002. His work appears in numerous public private and corporate collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Museum of London, Arts Council of England Collection, Tate Britain, Penguin Books Collection, Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon, France, Museum of Modern Art New York, HRH Prince of Wales, Government Art Collection, Deutsche Bank and San Diego Museum of Arts.