Daniel Minter

Daniel Minter: @d1minter is an artist exploring themes of displacement and diaspora, ordinary/extraordinary blackness; spirituality in the Afro-Atlantic world; and the (re)creation of meanings of home. Minter works in varied media – canvas, wood, metal, paper. twine, rocks, nails, paint. This cross-fertilization informs his artistic sensibility. His carvings become assemblages. His paintings are often sculptural.

Minter’s work has been exhibited at the Portland Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Charles H. Wright Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Bates College, University of Southern Maine, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, David C. Driskell Center and Northwest African American Art Museum. An NEA travel grant enabled him to live and work in Salvador, Bahia Brazil where he established relationships that continue to nurture his life and work.

Minter has illustrated over a dozen children’s books, including Going Down Home with Daddy (2020 Caldecott Honor) and Ellen’s Broom (Coretta Scott King Illustration Honor). In 2004 and 2011 the US Postal Service commissioned him to create Kwanzaa stamps.

As founding director of Maine Freedom Trails, he highlights the history of the Underground Railroad and the New England abolitionist movement. For 15 years Minter has raised awareness of the 1912 forced removal of an interracial community on Maine’s Malaga Island. His formative work on the subject of Malaga emerges from Minter’s active engagement with the island, its descendants, archeologists, anthropologists and scholars. This dedication to righting history was pivotal in the island's designation as a public preserve. In 2019, Minter co-founded Indigo Arts Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating the artistic development of people of African descent. Minter is a graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta and holds an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from Maine College of Art.