N/B: THE DARE Part 1 exhibition/fundraising runs from 14 January 2026 to 28 January 2026.

I began my artistic training at the Montréal Museum Summer School at the age of fifteen, where I studied life drawing, before going on to complete a Fine Arts degree at university. My first professional role was as a graphic designer at Québécor, Canada’s largest printing company, where I gained experience in newspaper production and digital image-making. Although my dyslexia presented challenges, this period gave me a strong technical foundation and led to a decade of freelance work.

I initially at university was trained in sculpture and worked with wood and clay before extending my practice to stone, metal, perspex, and other materials. In 2014, I also created an ephemeral fire sculpture on the shores of Wynnum, Brisbane, Australia. Over time, I expanded into painting as well. My professional background is diverse: I have experienced in French language, art, anthropology, and archaeology across North America and East Africa before settling in Australia in the 1990s. In India in 1992, I adopted my daughter and raised my family. In 1998, I returned to full-time art practice later.

During the 1990s in Canberra, I studied drypoint printing at Megalo Print Studio. Later, while living in Singapore Tyler Print Institute and learnt lithography, linocut, and woodblock printing. My work is grounded in the human condition and informed by travel, observation, and anthropological experiences. I have exhibited in every city where I have lived and have developed a collectors’ base internationally. I am particularly recognised for my gestural, ambidextrous drawing.

Since 2009, I have been based in Queensland, where I have continued to develop my practice from my Brisbane studio. In 2012, I submitted a portrait of Dr Karl Kruzeniski for the Archibald Prize; the work was accepted, although it was not exhibited that year due to circumstances surrounding the subject. My most recent body of work, Abandon, Adoption, Rejection, was exhibited at Metcalf Gallery, Brisbane Institute of Art, in winter 2023. The series was both emotionally and physically demanding, and after hand surgery that spring, I took a necessary break from my practice. I have since returned to full-time work through THE DARE project.

Today, I am an established visual artist with a certification from a French Art Collector AKOUN and sell on ArtMajeur online my works are recognisable for their figurative expressionist style. I continue to refine my practice through classes and workshops that challenge and extend my thinking. My work explores real human experience through themes of love, grief, joy, food, illness, difference, politics, and social commentary. At present, I am engaged in Re-Inventing Still Life, a new direction that reflects both my curiosity and my creative response to this stage of life.

Danièle