Tree of Life by Daisy Freedman in New York

I am an Brooklyn, NY based painter of fine art and murals. I see art as almost a holy calling. When I’m living my day to day life, I’m often struck by things and swept away with emotion for them. Little things – a friend’s child standing in a creek, flowers blooming in spring, a dead bee on a sidewalk. I was raised with no religious background and remain a-religious, but these little things incite an urge in me to worship. I use painting as a way to exalt them, usually through the use of vivid colors and light, and often through the use of religious imagery or classical decorative embellishments. Some of my influences are naturalists and/or members of the Hudson Valley School. They saw the natural world as God’s masterpiece, and painted as a means to celebrate it, to celebrate their god. For me, the divine is in everything. It is in us, in all our horror and our beauty, in the little spots of light that make life worth living, in the ways we connect with one another. This is what (and why) I paint.