Cynthia Daignault Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1978 -

Cynthia Daignault (born 1978) is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work is often described as rigorous and intense. Daignault is also a writer and musician and curator. Daignault was born and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended Stanford University and graduated with distinctions and honors and a BA. Instead of pursuing an MFA, as many modern American painters often do, Daignault chose to work with established artists, including Kara Walker, in more traditional models of mentorship. Daignault has a reverence for the tradition of painting, yet her work speaks to a sense of the modern, according to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Her process of painting relies less on exact visual realism, than on ideas and feelings. Daignault works with light and time and strives towards a sense of the universal. She feels that painted objects are like "concrete word poetry" and she has been called "a poet of a painter" by the New Yorker. Often, her works exist in the divide between abstraction and figuration. Daignault's paintings are often installed in series. The work, I love you more than one more day (2013) consists of 365 small oil canvases. This piece was described as lyrical and existing on the "verge of transcendence." Daignault took a few years to paint alone in the woods. She has said that the experience strengthened her resolve as an artist and that painting is her "life's practice." Daignault is also a published art writer and editor, including the monograph "Improbable History" about painter Sean Landers published by JRP|Ringier in the Fall of 2011, and the founder and editor of the publication A-Z.