Daryl’s work is inspired by his own experiences in the world, namely love, friendship, his childhood in the 80’s growing up in Cornwall’s tiny city of Truro, and his estrangement from the school system. Left cold by the national curriculum and ridiculed by teachers due to his undiscovered acute dyslexia his brain daydreamed off from the lessons in conformity and obedience and went on permanent holiday into his own thoughts.
Daryl feverishly consumed hours of his energy and time drawing – the result is a talented craftsmanship reflected in the skill and execution of his work. Whilst his fellow peers were sweating it out in exams and training to be workforce robots, his thoughts were left untouched and untainted to be expressed in more creative ways.As a result his work offers a refreshingly unique, lateral, funny, joyful and bitter take on a world turned on its head and scrutinised from a different place. He is free to make connections and thoughts that most people have once in a lifetime several times over in each painting. Let off the leash to create freely at Art College, his sketchbook ideas exploded out into a confusion of vibrant life and colour. He began to work on a larger scale and introduced new mediums such as household paint, oil pastels and masking tape mixed with pencils, biros and permanent markers. It is here we see the painful end of the relationship with his first true love expressed – the raw emotion violently etched into the paper.
A year out in 2001 offered Daryl the chance to lick his wounds and paint in his parents garden shed. The result was a phenomenal output of more mixed medium large-scale work that included pieces inspired by the Beach Boys, this, he says, “was a bid to move into less depressing territory”, it didn’t work.The Royal College of Art soon beckoned where his talent was nurtured and his dyslexia was finally discovered and supported. He continued to output a huge range of work from large paintings to his self-published artist’s books to moving image to smaller drawings.His work offers a full range of contradictions in an honest account of humanity, extreme on both ends of the spectrum – from masculine to feminine, violent to loving, beautiful to ugly, naive to knowledgeable, expressing nihilism mixed with joy and wonderment – both sides of the picture are united in uncompromising blunt honesty. The music he loves and the ideas, emotions and sounds expressed in them interweave with his own ideas providing a soundtrack and reference to his own experiences. The influence of musicians ranging from Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, and Pavement and many others can all be seen.
Daryl tells stories in his work and puts thoughts into form that everyone can identify with. His work crosses divides of gender, class, race and age. He is an honest everyman for the 21st century: unafraid and free. He lays himself open and raw through his art, displaying his inner most thoughts uncensored. The true beauty of his work is that he manages to express emotions and feelings such as love, pain and rage through his art in much the same way that a musician does.At present Daryl is living in London listening to The Fall, Kate Bush and early Adam & The Ants records plus working full time towards his next exhibition of paintings.