Introducing

Daryl Bates is a portrait painter working in oil on canvas and paper. His work has evolved from the early conceptual practice he developed as an undergraduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, maturing into a traditional western figuration approach following his masters thesis from Laguna College of Art and Design. Currently settled in Shanghai, China, Bates continues to investigate formal mark making while focusing on the nuance of human experience. Elements of identity politics including race, gender, age, social class, orientation, morality among others, become intimately personified through the languid figures that populate Bates' work. 
Upon stepping back to see the broader range of Bates' Oeuvre, an art practice characterized as a shape-shifter emerges through images and sensations depicted through drawing to performance to video. If there is one consistent motif stitching Bates' work together, it is the body, at once, influenced and molded by its social and natural environment.