THE ENERGY OF LIGHT · 2026
Amazing Grace
Daniel Hughes Vernola
PRICE
$10,000
Oil and Gold Leaf on Canvas
MEDIUM
56 in. × 74 in.
SIZE
2024
YEAR
My pigment combined with lead white and gold leaf radiates light, a nod to the local history of a specific hue, ‘Egyptian Violet’. This composition ruminates on that chroma; luminosity as my aesthetic heritage. An important east end painter’s legacy reflects in it.
The Painter Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) rose to fame in 1950s New York as a leading figure of the New York School, boldly mixing abstract brushwork with recognizable urban subjects, but spent time in the hamptons. She regularly corresponded with paint maker Leonard Bocour, how brilliant and intense his experimental tints became when mixed with white. Bocour promised to formulate and name a vibrant purple shade ‘Hartigan Violet’ because of this.
In honor of her, I utilized ‘her paint’ to evoke those sensibilities.
About the Work
Daniel Hughes Vernola is a painter born in Goshen, New York, 1976 and raised nearby in Monroe township. In 1993 Vernola attended the New York State Summer School For the Arts at Fredonia, New York, where artist Randy Williams inspired his potential.
From 1994 to ‘98 he pursued a Bachelor’s of Fine Art, majoring in painting, at New York City’s School of Visual Arts. Jeanne Siegel, chair of department, supported Vernola’s arrangement to stay in painter Jack Whitten's studio courses for the duration of those four years. Siegel's own course on Jackson Pollock, that she herself taught, enabled Vernola to tour his and Krasner’s studio in Springs, having great effect on him.
At the turn of the millennium, Vernola began an art teaching career and was accepted into the Steinhart School of education through New York University for masters degree studies abroad. For two summers thereafter, he maintained studio in the Italian city of Venice coming under the wing of Angiola Maria-Riva Churchill, Professor Emeritus. From 2003-2010, Vernola took up a live-work model in apprenticeship to Churchill, maintaining residence with her in Soho and traveling internationally for exhibitions.
As an ‘artist who teaches’, Vernola has worked in high needs, inner-city locations, first, East Harlem, then the South Bronx, for 26 years. He is dedicated to the idea: individuals shaped by combinations of cultural trajectories, regardless of social status or intellectual stature, needn't be deprived of a creative life and the best pedigree art education has to offer.
In New York City 2015 on, Vernola begin classes at The Art Students League on 57th street and artist Frank O'cain provided the combination of support and insight to begin formal abstraction as professional practice.
Daniel Hughes Vernola remains an active member of the League and maintains a studio in East Hampton, Long Island, articulating languages of pure form and color through paint. These past two summer seasons out east, he has facilitated the young people’s program at The Victor and Mabel Birckhead D’Amico Art Institute in Napeague.