Fifteen paintings of Daniel James Brophy at his first show “Trains, Stains and Hymns“ at the gallery of Kean University in Union NJ have shown the explosion of colors and passion in depicting life on the stage of the under-ground tunnels.

Homeless, panhandlers, street musicians, passengers and world of human pain, suffering and alienation elevated by the tremendous energy of the painter to communicate life and love in what our world is, or has turned to be, seen by the eyes of a stranger who can’t help but getting involved. The figures of humans hanging and exceeding or reaching to the edges of the frames of paintings, mysterious figures, obvious figures, poetic or distant figures centered or set on the stage of triptych-like compositions are simple in the essence, and that simplicity is underlining the clear message of complexity and value of human life.

I could see it only on photographs taken from the show but in details of each painting shown I found the world of true life and life meaningful to the fullest extent, even in portraying some ordinary or meaningless ambient where one may dwell or stray. In these fifteen paintings that are resembling the trees from the primordial garden although each of them may stand as a jungle of vibrant emotions echoing with music, noise, tremor and sometimes, even deeper than that, with a silence one may see the art from the cave abreast with the urban pictorial definition of humanity today.

One may experience the shamanic dance of healing or leaving the wounds speak for themselves. One may hear music from the instruments that seem lively and yet unanchored in any particular corner of the street, like coming from everywhere, from any spot of the globe to get poured into our senses. One may hear the comments on the art that is shocking or inappropriate, provoking or straying from the mainstreams of artistic expression or composition. These paintings do not carry any special experiment, but as a whole they appear to be a huge experiment in life, sometimes as simple as a human touch. They are all extensively involving, as someone said, stirring all our senses at the same time.

Similar way the artist appears mysterious as a child of a naïve soul of creation or a master of the wise vision and depth. There are things obviously incorporated to draw our attention to some detail, as fragments of reality caught on the spot and served on the plate or stuck to the body of the painting itself, but upon all these captivating details scattered on the paintings, some of them be coins, train tickets, playing cards, cigarettes or else we find it, a painting as a whole. There is a feeling of reliability and canon in this art, its solidity, style of painter to easily fill large formats of heavy boards or doors (?) wood panels which all together make the appearance of a cathedral with the icons of life and pain or warning and on its walls, voice and music filling it, pertaining not to past, history and death and not to future, but to the present moment brimming with life, any timeline being captured in that.

This art is powerful and strikingly persuasive in bringing its point. Humanity. Whatever connotation that word may have for anyone. Humanity as a whole, as an individual who could never be known but also never forgotten once after seeing him or her, humanity as emotional expression of faith, hopelessness and belief at the same time. Humanity as love for other human beings, way of pulling them out of anonymity of suffering.

This art might be seen as the engaged and applied in a way of having its loud message and clear voice of urge for all the people to turn one to another, to reach and touch the hands with each other and tie with emotions in some endeavor that takes all of humanity to get performed to the full, but nonetheless this art radiates the hope that it is not an impossible task.