Danny Kates • November 2006

A Fragile Heart

By Jennifer Otto

Fort Walton Beach painter Danny Kates weaves a web of emotion with each stroke of the brush.

He uses strong, fluid movement to add in a multitude of color.

“Color adds more emotion, more meaning and vibrance,” Kates, who paints under the name Danny K, explains. “I feel you are supposed to escape from reality and put your feelings on canvas.”

Danny K tends to gravitate towards “bright, happy colors” which often clash with the overall mood of his paintings.

Each piece revolves around love, but not in the traditional sense one would expect.

“I don’t give high hopes for relationships,” Danny K explains. “If I know it’s not going to work, I kind of make it not work.”

His own negative view on relationships is brought to life by a character he has named Fragile.

Fragile emerges onto the surface of Danny K’s paintings without hands wearing an oversized sweater and green corduroy pants.

“In high school I wore this orange sweater that was too long for me.” Danny K says. “It always covered my hands.”

Fragile’s face, closely matching the sweater’s color, displays a frown. Despite the missing hands, he clutches onto a broken heart.
 
“He is holding his heart, because it is fragile,” Danny K says. “It is like when you embrace something so tightly fearing it is going to break – only causing it to break more.”

Since Danny K keeps a lockdown on his heart, the real person inside is hidden. It is not until he paints that he can truly express himself to the world.

He has created Fragile as a portal to express his own thoughts and emotions.
 
Most people looking at Danny K’s artwork for the first time question the pessimistic tone.

“I kind of put on a happy face for people – I hold a lot inside,” he says. “When they see a painting, they try to guess what I’m feeling. It does not help me to tell them.”

It is obvious when looking through Danny K’s art collection that his work is not like most artists on the Emerald Coast.

“A lot of art in the area is based on sea life, dolphins and palm trees, but I feel like painting is my escape from reality, away from this town,” Danny K says. “I create a lot of dreamscapes using my emotions. This town is really based on realism.”

Having lived on the Emerald Coast for the past 13 years, Danny K is not impressed with the local art scene.

“I don’t really feel like people are spilling their guts on paintings. I think they just paint what they know,” he says. “A lot of them could do it if they wanted to, but they are afraid. They screen what they show on canvas.”

Danny K believes he is not alone in his views. However, with the local art scene so focused on sea life, he has found it challenging to locate these other artists.

In 2004, Danny K came up with a plan for finding these other artists while also opening the minds of people across the Emerald Coast and sharing with them different genres of art.

Danny K organized the Fragile Ambition Art & Music Festival. This annual event, set in different Emerald Coast locations each year, acts as a venue for artists and musicians to come together and unleash the urban art scene.

No dolphins or seashells will be a part of this event. The artists, musicians and photographers exhibiting during the festival are not typical to the Emerald Coast. These are the people that tend to be a little more daring with their work.

“There are a lot of artists in my genre that aren’t really getting that attention, and I’m trying to do that,” he says. “Trying to get that urban, abstract, surrealism out of the bushes. There’s a lot out there, but not a lot of people know.”

For more information on Fragile Ambition, check out Unique Art & Music Festival Stops in Fort Walton. The 4th Annual Fragile Ambition Art & Music Festival will be held in spring 2007. Check EmeraldCoast.com for more information.

For more on Danny K, visit him on MySpace