Did you know Daniel once found a dead horse while on a hike and took it home? It's a story you don’t want to miss...
What inspired Daniel to do that was a guy named George Stubbs, a painter in the 18th century.
George Stubbs painted a lot of horses, and he’d even seen dissections of them, which is quite impressive since it was more than two centuries ago!
When Dan was about 20 years old, he saw George Stubbs’ drawings in a book for the first time, and they fascinated him.
Ten years later, Dan came across a dead horse while hiking. It was pretty fresh, and it intrigued him so much, he decided to bring it home in his truck.
It took him weeks to clean the horse, and it wasn’t a very fun job … but he reassembled the skeleton, one bone at a time.
About 30 years later, Dan was commissioned to paint the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse … the bones of the horse he took home helped him with that masterful piece.
Now if that isn’t the mark of a dedicated artist, I don’t know what is!
When I first watched him paint, I couldn’t put my finger on what makes his art uniquely “Dan.”
He has a very particular way of seeing and approaching his subjects, and it isn’t something I see very often. And his work has a very edgy feel, which helps its traditional nature bridge into the contemporary world.
Dan’s paintings are beyond incredible. There’s a certain depth to them I can’t really explain in words. Yet when you look up close, it’s not the detail you would normally see in a portrait. It’s as if Dan knows how to make you feel the details, but without actually putting them all in.
His approach to art is very different from anyone else’s on earth.
I’ve met many artists throughout my career, and, without a doubt, Dan is one of the finest painters I’ve ever seen.
Cynthia Leitner, CEO of Museum of Outdoor Arts and executive producer of a PBS documentary film titled Daniel Sprick: Pursuit of Truth and Beauty, said: