Daniel J. Rhodes is a native of Houma, Louisiana, born on the highland of Bayou Terrebonne in 1958, next to the best French
bread bakery in town. Not too far from there, you could meander along the bayou road and buy home-boiled syrup from a
local sugarcane farmer. And if you let the land pull you, you'd spill like water into the swamps and marshes,
wetlands loaded with ice chests of shrimp and crabs and sacks of red crawfish. Danny grew up two blocks
between Bayou Terrebonne and Bayou Cane, so he didn't have to paddle far to find the wetlands - willowy
spots that as a sunny day youth, Danny fished, netted crawfish, hunted, and picked blackberries, and on
rainy days he perched over his father or his Pawpaw Bazet's shoulder to watch them oil paint cypress
scenes on canvas. Pawpaw, a printer by trade, also taught Danny to carve wooden plates and to use a
century-old press that sang and clanked in Pawpaw's backyard printing shop. Next to the cast-iron
press, Danny snitched from a garbage can loaded with paper scraps and job trimmings, all the blank
paper he needed for sketching.
While a student at LSU, Danny embraced a new media - pen & ink . . . and Judith Lee. After graduation
and newly married, he settled in Baton Rouge with Judith where she encouraged Danny to use India ink
to render word and creatures that swam into his mind from the swamps and bayous of his youth. Crawfish
and crabs seemed to mostly haunt him . . . and they still do. They swim from coffee cups and fly like
Cupid in his dreams. Working as a fulltime artist for many years, Danny incorporated his poems and
prose as part of his graphic compositions. The artwork may appear to be realistic at a glance, but
beneath the surface is a theme of culture. And now the old press resides in Baton Rouge, in
Danny's backyard studio where he hand-pulls prints, using Pawpaw's press mostly for color work.
Black detail is printed from modern presses on acid-free paper. The prints are a blend of old
and new techniques. All by design are incomplete until colored and finished with brush washes
of acrylic and strokes of pencil color; only then are they signed, numbered, and dated, time
starting over after Katrina, first year as IAK.
Judith Lee, will tell you, "You can't keep Danny out of a boat." His boats have grown much larger
for Captain Daniel Rhodes. Ten years ago while doing art shows on his time off, Danny decked his
way from ordinary seaman to Master of Oceans, licensed by the US Coast Guard, sailing the waters
of the Gulf of Mexico and servicing the offshore drilling industry. With all that water around
him he has even more inspirations that swim onto paper, both as writing and as two-dimensional
art. Danny is drafting his first novel, the working title Crawfish Mambo Jambo, a story based
on his experiences as a commercial fisherman from 1986 to 1998. The story has inspired a new
series of crawfish images, such as the "Craw-de-lis" that will be incorporated into the book
and as hand-colored limited editions.
Worldwide people collect Danny's work. He has personally shown his collection of seafood and
wildlife art regionally along the coasts of North America from North Carolina to Texas, and
distributors have represented him nationwide. He has won numerous honors at many regional
art festivals, but the best award is a place in the hearts of collectors who have purchased
his work.
Daniel J. Rhodes is a native of Houma, Louisiana, born on the highland of Bayou Terrebonne in 1958, next to the best French
bread bakery in town. Not too far from there, you could meander along the bayou road and buy home-boiled syrup from a
local sugarcane farmer. And if you let the land pull you, you'd spill like water into the swamps and marshes,
wetlands loaded with ice chests of shrimp and crabs and sacks of red crawfish. Danny grew up two blocks
between Bayou Terrebonne and Bayou Cane, so he didn't have to paddle far to find the wetlands - willowy
spots that as a sunny day youth, Danny fished, netted crawfish, hunted, and picked blackberries, and on
rainy days he perched over his father or his Pawpaw Bazet's shoulder to watch them oil paint cypress
scenes on canvas. Pawpaw, a printer by trade, also taught Danny to carve wooden plates and to use a
century-old press that sang and clanked in Pawpaw's backyard printing shop. Next to the cast-iron
press, Danny snitched from a garbage can loaded with paper scraps and job trimmings, all the blank
paper he needed for sketching.