Child's Play: Daniel Coombs

Born in the 1970s Daniel Coombs, known to some as Dan, has masterfully invented a new language within the conversation of bricolage. Much of Coombs’ previous work was primarily sculptural, unifying kitschy gadgets and amputated toy limbs then splattering this newly fabricated construct with paint to animate its presence--the comparison to Rauschenberg or Oldenburg is almost unavoidable. Similar in overall aesthetic, Coombs’ more recent work places a greater emphasis on the two-dimensional painting, interspersed with attached sculptural elements. And yet, despite the attempt at visual description/analysis, Coombs’ work defies classification; they are two-dimensional paintings with all the qualities of a three-dimensional assemblage.[1] Coombs has a clear understanding of a formal painterly language, but he chooses to override it in a chaotic battle of pandemonium. He focuses, instead, on dripped, sprayed, and painted colors on large canvases--dominant colors being “synthetic, trippy-acid yellow, pinks, mauves, and oranges.”[2] Coombs’ paintings appear in constant motion, like a disorderly cacophony of commotion. 

Coomb’s charges both Princess M (2005) and Katinka (2005) with his characteristic amalgamation of hectically splattered line, vibrant color, and collaged illustrations. As seen in these two works, like many other mixed-media works from this series, Coombs incorporates, often spotlighting, found objects from mainstream media sources--photographs of celebrities, images from film, comic-strip illustrations, children's toys, and miscellaneous bric-a-brac.[3] In Princess M, fluorescent cutouts of Austrian budgies, scattered among instructional diagrams of men trying on suits encircle two glowing pictures of TV’s teen star, Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a plastic figurine of the Incredible Hulk busting through the center of the painting. Katinka hosts a similarly playful kinetic energy, yet exhibits a greater number of sharp, rigid lines over curvilinear ones, for a more aggressive feeling. Texture plays a significant role in this painting as well; glopped-on pink paint drips down the imagined roof of the cat’s cage, white paint splatters the lower section of the painting, and spray-painted blue raindrops leap off of the canvas. Coombs evokes a sensationalist response to each of these mixed-media constructions, creating “a visual explosion of abstraction and surreal narrative detail.”[4]

Daniel Coombs, Princess M, 2005

Oil, acrylic, found objects & collage on canvas

Daniel Coombs, Katinka, 2005

Oil, acrylic, found objects & collage on canvas

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[1] The Approach, Press Release. 

[2] The Independent

[3] The Approach, Press Release. 

[4] The Approach, Press Release.