Dana Blume (b.1993) is an American painter based in Seattle, WA. He earned his BFA in drawing and painting from California State University of Long Beach in 2019 and his MFA at the University of Washington in 2023.

“My paintings imagine a world where human anxieties, hopes, and absurdities take shape as awkward, grotesque-but-cute creatures and unnameable bodily forms. These characters bumble through nonsensical, often destructive hijinks without much sense of morality or intelligence—but with a strange tenderness.

The images begin as quick, scribbled drawings that capture a feeling I notice in myself or others, or sometimes a sensation I can’t yet name. Through iterative sketches and layered painting, that feeling shifts and clarifies. I believe that if an image can hold a feeling, working on it can change the way we understand or carry that feeling. In this way, the paintings become mementos of reflection, memory, and emotional experience.

Recurring motifs and themes —the cute monster, bugs, fences, clouds, delinquency, burgeoning sexuality, weapons, pies, cherry bombs—intermingle with the expressive materiality of paint. The imagery I paint draws on childhood, adolescence, and nostalgia through a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere created by an accumulation of visible marks. I believe my younger self would have been fascinated by my work, which I find to be a useful metric in the studio.

Though my characters have no fixed names or roles, they inevitably reflect myself and people close to me. They carry my baggage with a clumsy resilience, embodying a world where stupidity, destruction and tenderness coexist.”

For all inquiries about available work, please email me at danablume12@gmail.com.