‘The human figure – and what it says about our fragile condition – is the major preoccupation of Daniel Allen. Allen’s figurative odyssey has gone through various phases in the last ten years.

With their strong autobiographical undercurrent, his gently humorous, rather lugubrious characters play out some of life’s dramas and dilemmas, alter-egos who represent different aspects of our personality, the situations in which we find ourselves. Variously decorated with transfer imagery and designs, or more simply with poured slips that accentuate their free surface finish, these figures, alert and intent, are seen in isolation or in more complex tableaus.

Allen’s parallel preoccupation with the chair, often in interaction with the figure, is another form of human presence. He treats it as a surrogate, an extension of ourselves. Allen’s beings, fixedly staring (at an object of desire, at us, into space) seem to be waiting, but for what? Their atmosphere is silently charged, like the long pregnant pauses in a Samuel Beckett play. Pride, temptation, masculinity, self-doubt, achievement – such aspects are treated in touching pathos.’

-David Whiting 2005