Words and Photos By Gabrielle Reeder
Dane Capo is the Auspicious Abstract Artist
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NEA/Pinellas Recovers Grant Update
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Dane Capo places a blank, medium-sized canvas on an easel, squirts a few colors of paint on a plastic palette and paints. Abstract art is his main focus, but he caters to portraits, most notably famous figures like Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon. He utilizes every item a traditional artist uses, his smock splattered in paint and his hands splashed with color.
But the one thing Dane does not use during his creative time? Fear.
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Fearless Abstract
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Dane and his mother Krista set out to teach and curate an art class titled “Fearless Abstract” at Indian Rocks’ Beach Art Center. The three-hour class took place on April 27 starting at 6 p.m. Twenty people piled into the art center to attempt a class on painting without the feeling so common to artists – fear.
“We came up with the idea out of Autism Awareness Month,” Krista says. “Everybody asks about how he chooses his colors and how he comes up with these weird mixtures and things. I blame it on the Autism because he doesn’t have any fear about choosing a color. He just chooses a color. It’s not right. It’s not wrong. And then when he’s painting he just thinks everything’s good. Which also leads to that whole no fear thing.”
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Dane’s Artist Background
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Krista’s mother, Dane’s grandmother, was a visual artist. Krista shared an anecdote near the beginning of class about Dane’s grandmother being trapped in ‘the fear.’ She would regularly stare at blank canvases, the white space making her uneasy.
According to Krista, when she moved into her first home she asked her mother if she could create some paintings to decorate the house. Her mother agreed, but got stuck in the fear of staring at the canvas. Krista disclosed that she snatched the canvas from her mother, painted one long brushstroke on the canvas and told her, ‘There! It’s not blank anymore.’ Soon, Krista’s house filled up with original art.
Dane’s grandmother’s expertise inspired him. She passed away when he was 12, but her art impacted him tremendously. He began painting his own work at age 16.
“So we homeschooled and he was studying art history, and decided he wanted to try to paint. So he did. And then he just kept painting,” Krista says.
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Introduction to Class
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Krista laid out tiny pieces of pink paper in front of every easel. When we sat down she instructed us to write down the one thing holding us back from experiencing ourselves to full capacity. The nagging fear that incapacitates us.
Everyone wrote on their papers, dropped the slips in a bucket and Krista put the papers outside. She unleashed us from our fear in order to allow us to unleash our full creative potential.
After our fears were placed outside, we were allowed to choose our colors. Dane only had one rule for the colors we chose. We needed to have black and white on our palettes – black to make colors darker and white to make colors lighter. Every other color choice was up to us.
“So I think for the general audience and a lot of artists, starting a painting and deliberating over colors and textures and ‘is it enough?’ and ‘is it this?’ – he doesn’t have that and I think it’s because of his Autism,” Krista says.
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Painting
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Once everyone gathered their selected hues, we sat down to our blank canvases. Dane had jumped into his masterpieces. Krista told me he would paint a series of three paintings to go to a local attorney’s office.
Dane brazenly brushed vibrant colors across his canvas, finishing the first painting within 20 minutes. The class writhed over which color to use, muttering they don’t do well without rules, as Dane continued to paint without hesitation or question.
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After the initial moments of uncomfortability receded, guests eased into their paintings – depicting landscapes, hearts, outer space and pieces solely left up for interpretation.
“The Art Center has not ever done a class like this – it’s always ‘come in and paint something specific.’ So to be able to just come in and let people feel is a whole new thought for what’s going on there. And so the feedback for that has been really good. That people are just going to go paint.”
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Moving Forward
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“We’d like to keep a class there at the art center for the community, but then what we’d like to do is transition it here [to Dane’s studio] for different populations.”
Krista explains that a mother of a 22-year-old boy with Autism signed him up for the class. Noting his elation Krista says, “So if we can transition that population and grow it in the community and do more things like that here in the gallery, I think that that would be really exciting for us. Because then it marries our advocacy, inclusion and the social structure that these kids don’t have opportunity to.”
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For more about Dane and his artwork visit danecapo.com.
For social media updates visit Facebook and Instagram.
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The Beach Art Center is a recipient of the Pinellas Recovers Grant, provided by Creative Pinellas through a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts American Rescue Plan.”
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