BIO
Daniel Flahiff (b. 1966, Los Angeles) is an artist based in New York City. Trained as an illustrator and designer at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle, he went on to earn his MFA from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles in 1997, where he studied under Mike Kelly and Stephen Prina. After 28 years as an art and creative director, Daniel relocated from Seattle to New York City to pursue his fine art full-time. In 2025, following a critical cardiac event, he launched The Unstoppable Heart, a body of work created with the awareness that time is borrowed, tomorrow never guaranteed.
He is a recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including gold, silver, and platinum Telly Awards, and a 2023 Anthem Award. Flahiff's short film, Dad Bod, was awarded Best Short Documentary award at the 2024 Oregon Documentary Film Festival and has been screened internationally. He has been featured in press outlets including 425 Magazine, Seattle P-I, and Modern Art Notes. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Royal Melbourne Institue of Technology, Melbourne, Australia; Three Day Weekend, Los Angeles; Röda Sten, Göteborg, Sweden; FRAME, Copenhagen, Denmark; Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; The Pilot Space, Auckland, New Zealand; California State University, Los Angeles; Wonderful World of Art, Seattle; Photo Center NW, Seattle; OK Hotel, Seattle; and the Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue; Glowlab, Brooklyn, NY.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My creative process unfolds across photography, video, and painting—mediums that together act as a redemptive practice, mending the fractures of lived experience. My work does not erase or romanticize the violence, pain, and suffering we experience. Instead, this work “attends and mends.” It explores the possibilities of letting light become visible in the cracks.
In photography and video, I document the city’s fissures—moments when ordinary life fractures into grace. These images are the raw input, the broken shards of lived time.
In painting, I enter into those shards, layering pigment, mixed media, color, line, and gesture to build surfaces that are not polished but prismatic—embedding fissures, textures, transparency, and depth.
My vocabulary is rooted in Bay Area Figurative and NYC Abstract Expressionist traditions—Diebenkorn, Park, Rauchenberg, and Twombly—reinterpreting their questions of form, presence, and inner space for our time. I pursue this through a posture of redemption: to see the city as soil, not a battleground, and to tend to its aesthetic and spiritual wounds.
In this sense, my current work continues a lineage of artists who weave faith and transcendence into contemporary art — from Mark Rothko, Anselm Kiefer, and Makoto Fujimura to the visionary traditions of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Fra Angelico. Through painting, photography, and video, I reimagine my time in New York City as a sacred encounter, where each image becomes not just a picture but a vessel of grace.
Through the use of these approaches and techniques, I am, in the words of James Baldwin, attempting to "make something meaningful of the suffering and joy that we experience. Art, in this sense, is a form of grace—it is where we meet God, in the act of creation."
-Daniel Flahiff, 2025
CV
AWARDS:
Oregon Documentary Film Festival, Best Short Doc [2024]
Telly Awards, Silver (X2) [2024]
Oregon Short Film Festival, Best Micro Doc [2024]
Telly Awards, Gold [2023]
Anthem Awards, Bronze [2023]
AVA Digital Awards, Gold [2023]
International Design Awards, Gold [2023]
Viddy Awards, Platinum (x2) [2022]
MarCom Awards, Gold [2022]
The Davey Awards, Gold (X2) [2022]
Hermes Creative Awards, Platinum [2022]
Muse Creative Award, Silver [2022]
SELECTED PRESS:
425 Magazine, Seattle P-I, Modern Art Notes
EXHIBITIONS/FESTIVALS:
“A Summer of Hope,” Lens/Scratch [2025]
'Fremkaldelse / Into the Light' Copenhagen Photo Festival, Denmark [2025]
LaCrosse Action Film Festival, LaCrosse, WI [2024]
Fresh Coast Film Festival, Marquette, MI [2024]
Oregon Documentary Film Festival, Portland, OR [2024]
New York Indie Shorts, New York, NY [2024]
Movie Crush, Walla Walla, WA [2024]
Daddying Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA [2024]
Hollywood Short Film Festival, Hollywood, CA [2024]
New Hope Film Festival, New Hope, PA [2024]
Frozen River Film Festival, Winona, MN [2024]
Oregon Short Film Festival, Portland, OR [2023]
Cannes Indy Short Film Festival, Cannes, France [2023]
“Long Shot,” Photo Center NW, Seattle, WA [2011]
“Power to the Poster,” The New BLK, Omaha, NE [2010]
“CitizenGallery,” Power to the Poster, Match Factory Project [2009]
“Snap to Grid,” LACDA, Los Angeles, CA [2007]
“Bleeding Hearts,” Gallery OK, OK Hotel, Seattle, WA [2007]
“Conflux,” Glowlab via Free Press, Brooklyn, NY [2006]
“Labyrinth,” Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden [2006]
“Free Press,” Röda Sten, Göteborg, Sweden [2006]
“Menlo Park,” Gallery OK, OK Hotel, Seattle, WA [2006]
“International Experimental Cinema Exposition,” Telluride, CO [2000]
“Transmission/Reception,” The Pilot Space, Auckland, New Zealand [1997]
“Territorial Motif,” Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia [1997]
“IMFA,” California State University, Los Angeles, CA [1996]
“Society,” feat. Dietrich Diedrichson, Three Day Weekend, Los Angeles, CA [1995]
“Disegno et Altri Miti,” The Lofts, Seattle, WA [1994]
“Early Thaw: Paintings,” School of Visual Concepts, Seattle, WA [1993]
“Pacific Northwest Annual Exhibition, Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA [1992]
“33rd Magnolia Juried Exhibition,” Magnolia, WA [1992]
“Eclectic as the Day is Long,” Wonderful World of Art, Seattle, WA [1992]
“Mercer Island 24th Juried Exhibition,” Mercer Island, WA [1991]