Peter Daniels died in August 1998, at the peak of his career, he was already internationally renowned for the immense power of his shapes, forms and colours, but the project to fill the walls of Nimbus concert hall at the Wyastone Leys Centre for Performing Arts near Monmouth with his exuberant, fiery paintings was destined to take him to even greater heights. With only part of the work completed he found himself cruelly crippled, and facing the realisation that he would never paint again. From his wheelchair he set about making plans to ensure the fulfillment of dream by using state of the art computer technology to capture and store the images he had already produced. Whilst he has been described as an abstract artist he himself considered that his work was very figurative, but focused on an aspect of his subject that people were not used to seeing. Always he sought to capture 'the moment of seeing before looking begins' translating that simultaneous comprehension of his subject experienced before the analytical eye and brain interfered. He was an artist of great integrity, whose work moved on over the years, inspired by what he called 'divine dissatisfaction' he constantly stretched and discovered new ways of expressing himself. The Pembrokeshire landscape changed him, and changed his work, which is filled with the sense of magic and timelessness of a land that has remained the same for thousands of years. It was an exciting discovery when he found that he was treading a path already taken by his great-great grandfather, journeyman painter William Daniels, whose painting of a local scene (now in the ownership of the National Museum of Wales) was painted from the exact viewpoint chosen by his great-great grandfather.

In 1993 peter Daniels began a project to paint six murals for the Nimbus Foundation. These vast canvases were to have been the largest private commission undertaken in the UK this century - and a stunning addition to the interior of the concert hall. Long before any brush was held Peter undertook extremely detailed research into the techniques of painting very large pictures; the appropriate paint, most durable canvas, methods of application and hanging. He eventually decided that he would even need a new (and larger) studio and subsequently purchased an old school house in Pembrokeshire. The first canvases had been primed and the initial visual ideas were in progress when Peter was diagnosed with inoperable spinal cancer. Realising the impossibility of the sheer physical effort involved in managing such a large project Peter made a typically inspired u-turn. Instead of attempting the pictures full size he would paint 'normal' size and then use the latest digital scanning and printing techniques to 'blow-them-up' to the final proportions. Now a new period of research took place into photography, digital scanning technology, computer colour correction and printing which would be on an industrial scale, but with fine art requirements. All this Peter did with the additional burden of knowing that his painful and immobilising cancer would make the time short to complete the work. As it turned out Peter completed his determination of the technical solutions and finished all six of the original art works. Unfortunately he did not live to supervise the final printing. Together his widow, Elizabeth, and the trustees of the Nimbus Foundation have carried out Peter's design and these extraordinary pictures are now hung in the Wyastone Concert Hall and unveiled during a celebration opening concert.

 

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