Danny Rae Forrest (née Dyer)
Hello and welcome to my website,
I'm Danny Forrest (nee Dyer), the artist behind Danny Rae Design! I am stay at home mum to Freddie and a self taught artist, focusing on creating polymer clay art. I explore colours, shadows and textures by sculpting polymer clay to create life-like, vibrant representations of nature.
I grew up in the beautiful Whangarei Heads as a Dyer, then married Duncan Forrest. After travelling all over the world together we have found our way back to New Zealand, making Kapiti Coast our new home. My background is in archaeology, marketing and graphic design which has given me the foundation for my ideas and use of detail in my artwork.
I have always been creative but my polymer clay fascination began in 2017 when I needed a creative outlet to balance my marketing job. Initially I was inspired by the geometric designs illustrated by Antony Clark, Flox’s vibrant aerosol stencil art and Van Gough’s colourful impasto painting techniques. But now I take inspiration from my surroundings and beautiful photographs of flora, fauna and scenes taken by various artists or myself. By the end of 2017 I had developed my own technique that enhances the essence of the flora, fauna or scenes that I am depicting. I do this by mixing the clay into a myriad of colours and then moulding it in a unique way. For example I use a lot of rolled clay, often to depict feathers or fur, as well as built up clay to create depth. If you look close enough you can see my fingerprints on each piece of clay! Once I have created my art, I bake it in the oven to harden and then adhere it to a simple wooden board to enhance the 3D effect of the clay.
I have created distinctive prints of my artwork too! My limited edition prints are a vibrant, sharp and intricate echo of my original artworks, created using a vector impression of my hand sculpted original polymer clay artwork.
If you haven’t already explored my artwork, look through my Shop to see my available art and my artwork archive to see past artworks I have created, and contact me if you have any enquiries!
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