Dan Thompson was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. He earned his M.F.A. from the Graduate School of Figurative Art of the New York Academy of Art. He supplemented his training with several additional years of private study and studio apprenticeships along the east coast of the United States. He has been awarded two grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, and has twice received the Ethel Lorraine Bernstein Memorial Award for Excellence in Painting from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. In 2001, Mr. Thompson won Best of Show in the American Society of Portrait Artist’s International Portrait Competition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 2006, Mr. Thompson cofounded the Grand Central Academy of Art in New York. In 2008, he cofounded the Janus Collaborative School of Art in New York. Mr. Thompson has instructed privately at Studio 126 in New York.  He has also taught at Parsons The New School for Design, the New York Academy of Art, the Art Students League of New York, and Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia.  He has demonstrated and taught workshops in San Francisco, Seattle, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Washington, D.C, and in Italy and France.

Since 2002, Mr. Thompson has demonstrated portrait drawing and painting, and served as a juror and board member, for the Portrait Society of Canada’s International Portrait Conference in Toronto.  He has lectured at the Dahesh Museum of Art, served as a speaker at Studio Incamminati’s Advanced Portrait Workshop and Symposium, and written on technique and painting practice for art publications across the United States.

His work can be found in public and private collections throughout the United States, and in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. For more information on Mr. Thompson, please visit www.DanThompsonArt.com.