Art Brokerage: Artist Dan Rizzie was born in 1951 in Poughkeepsie, New York. he currently resides in Sag Harbor, New York. His education includes a MFA from Southern Methodist Universitym in Dallas, Texas, and a BFA from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas in 2005. Dan Rizzie is a skillful, inventive and unconventional painter. His art is not simply decorative, even though it is about surface and texture. He labors intuitively, allowing one shape or line to lead to another. He prefers aged paint surfaces that suggest centuries of urban decay like an old Italian wall, using a physically strenuous layering method that incorporates newsprint (The New York Times is most absorbent), gel, and gesso. He scrapes and abrades the surface, staining it to achieve the distressed quality he prefers. Only then is ready to begin painting. Rizzie never uses color straight from the tube. By mixing dirt, plaster, and coffee grounds into the paints he achieves the rich textural variations the desires. Through an additive process, Rizzie obsessively reworks every portion of a painted composition although the final creation never betrays the struggle.