Daniel Minter

Daniel Minter

"Born in Ellaville, a small rural community in southern Georgia, in 1961. Minter has illustrated nine children’s books, including Ellen’s Broom, written by Kelly Starling Lyons which won the 2013 Coretta Scott King honor for illustration, Seven Spools of Thread: A Kwanzaa Story, winner of a Best Book Award from the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, and The Riches of Oseola McCarty, named an Honor Book by the Carter G. Woodson Awards. Minter’s paintings and sculptures have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at galleries and museums including the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, Bates College, Hammonds House Museum and the Meridian International Center.

Daniel Minter's art work is a study of memory. The many ways in which memory is embedded into our past, present and future. It is the interconnection of time that contains the essence of what memory has left behind. These concepts are the inspiration for Daniel Minter's paintings and sculpture.

Using archetypes, symbols, icons and folklore steeped in the context of African-American and African-Diaspora culture, Minter creates a visual vocabulary. Metaphors take shape out of chairs, houses, snakes and trees infusing the energy of emotion, action and place to everyday life, everyday being.

Minter is the founding director and vice-president of Maine Freedom Trails, Inc. He created the markers for the Portland Freedom Trail, which identifies significant sites related to the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad in Portland, Maine. He created the 2004 Kwanzaa stamp and the 2011 Kwanzaa stamp for the U.S. Postal Service.
Minter lives in Portland, Maine with his wife, Marcia, and son, Azari Ayindé."