Dan Munkus is an artist in flux. After having devoted his working life to making a career in music, a recent health scare prompted a serious and ongoing bout of self reflection. The result of that reflection has been a return for Munkus to his initial artistic love of visual mark making. The son of an engineer and an accountant, his work is almost always a struggle between their sensibilities and expectations as people of precision and practicality and his own desire for spiritual and creative freedom. Dan holds a BFA in Fine Arts from the University of California Berkeley and an MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College. He makes work out of Peekskill, NY where he lives with his beautiful wife and two daughters.
Dan can be contacted at dan@danmunkus.com

  • The creative process for me is primarily an act of learning. It’s a scientific process rooted in emotion and life experience, an oscillation between observation and action.

    I use the painting process as a mirror to better understand the architecture of my own consciousness, the thoughts and feelings that arise within, and if and how they may have a social dimension.

    I take some time to set up my paints and wander around a little, starting to turn my attention inward. I try to open myself up for whatever might happen.

    On the material surface I feel space. Shifting and unsure. Full of creative potential.

    Within the space I see living forms. Containers of information alive and floating in space. Hovering.

    Sometimes I see memories. A white flower like the one given to my daughter at the end of kindergarten.

    Sometimes the material surface shows me scenes from another world.

    My identity begins to feel bound up in something bigger and every now and then the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined disappears.

    I leave behind objects proving I was here, something for my daughters to sift through. A literal leaving of marks. An ever changing obituary of agency.

  • Dan Munkus is a painter, musician, and interdisciplinary artist with extensive experience in visual arts, music composition, production and engineering, and cross disciplinary collaborative art making.

    Dan was born in Winfield, IL and transplanted to Southern California at an early age setting the foundation for a lifelong search for, and obsession with, the idea of “home”. His earliest experience of feeling a sense of belonging came in his early twenties while attending college at the University of California, Berkeley (BFA Fine Arts Practice 2001). The wide ranging counter culture of the Bay Area merged with the student body’s and faculty’s sense of intellectual curiosity was a point of awakening for Munkus.

    This period led Munkus to the discovery of Zen Buddhism and a devoted meditation practice lasting seven years. While no longer a practicing Buddhist, the Zen sensibility and search for inner knowledge and understanding, even the aesthetic of Zen paintings, still influence his work and life twenty years later.

    Dan moved to New York City in his late twenties where he fully invested himself in the act of music making in all its forms. In 2013 he earned his MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts at Brooklyn College where he formed more long term friendships and collaborative connections while working in the theatrical and performing arts.

    Emerging from a health scare in the fall of 2023, now married with two children, Dan has shifted his attention away from the grind of music production to seek out a creative life that is both robust and conducive to healthy living. That shift has led Munkus back to his earliest passion of mark making and a deeply felt and surprising painting practice.

    Dan makes work in Peekskill, NY where he lives with his beautiful wife and two children. He has released many musical works under his given name, with his band Old Robes, as The Atomic Boxer, more recently as Polka Dot Deli, and working as a producer/engineer with other artists. He has made work internationally and has toured across the United States performing his solo works of music. He is preparing for solo shows of his paintings in the fall of 2025 and the spring of 2026. He can be found most days painting in his backyard studio, tinkering with music, or at the gym. For inquiries please contact Dan at dmunkus@gmail.com

  • Hendrick Hudson Free Library - Solo Exhibition - Sept. 2025

    Club Fit Jefferson Valley - Solo Exhibition - March 2026

  • John C. Hart Memorial Library - Solo Exhibition - March 2025

    Kinosaito Community Art Benefit Show - Dec. 2024

    Club Fit Jefferson Valley - Solo Show - Nov. 2024

    Super Secret Projects - Personal Protest - Group Show - Sept. 2024

    Polka Dot Deli - Oft Come Devil - Aug. 2024

    Kinosaito Community Art Benefit Show - Dec. 2023

    No Grudges - "I Need Somebody" - Aug. 2023 (co-engineer)

    The Atomic Boxer and Oh My Friend - Fist and Stone - June 2023

    Dan Munkus / John Jannone - The Edge of the High Trace (Animation by John Jannone) - Winner Best Experimental Animation at Experimental, Dance, and Music Film Festival, 2022

    Rachel Epp - "Cool Kids in the Cheap Seats" - June 2022 (composer, co-produced with Tommy White, engineer/mix engineer)

    Aviva Jaye - "So Close" - May 2022 (co-produced with Tommy White, engineer/mix engineer)

    Dan Munkus - "Joy Patterns" - Jan 2022

    Dan Munkus - The Edge of the High Trace - Nov. 2021

    Subtle Soup Records - 2013-2020 - Founder/Principal

    Old Robes / John Jannone - "Soldier Online" Animation - Winner Best Animation Feedback Experimental Film Festival

    Old Robes - The Spider and the Spectator - April 2018

    Robot Immigrants - My Heart is a Traveler - April 2013

    Old Robes - Past the Suitors - Nov. 2012

    The Nights Bears - Clytemnestra - Oct. 2012

    The Night Bears - Meat & Light - Sept. 2012

    Diverse Plots Ensemble - Diverse Plots - May 2012

    The Night Bears - Assumptions Made in the Dark - Dec. 2011

    Artsbridge Scholarship Recipient - Spring 2001