Daniel Oster

A lifelong resident of southern Maryland, Daniel Oster also considers himself a lifelong artist working undercover as an assistant manager in the retail industry. Aside from some art classes at Patuxent High School and McDaniel College, Mr. Oster considers himself largely self-taught from studying the works of artists in the worlds of fine art, cartooning, illustration, and social media. While Mr. Oster draws much of his style from the comic strips of his childhood, especially Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, Mr. Oster firmly believes in eclecticism: the ability to draw upon and synthesize influences from different aesthetics and disciplines to create something more than the sum of its parts.

As Mr. Oster’s style and perspective on art evolved over the years so too the media he uses for his work. In his earlier days as an artist, he used colored pencils for the majority of his work up until his graduation from McDaniel in 2015 when he decided to move away from colored pencils and use Prismacolor and Copic markers instead because of their more solid colors. In recent years however, Mr. Oster decided to move away from markers and use digital art programs to color his work for the foreseeable future. Mr. Oster occasionally utilizes other media for his work depending on the circumstances, such as ink wash on Bristol board or acrylic paints on canvas.

For the longest time, Mr. Oster regarded the Calvert Arts Council as just another institution in southern Maryland oriented towards the county’s senior citizens at the expense of young adults. In light of the Arts Council recent efforts in reaching out to young adults and helping promote their artwork, Mr. Oster eagerly anticipates many of the Art Council’s future initiatives he would like to become an active part of.