Daniel A'Vard is a Porepunkah-based visual artist, facilitator, and guide to creative people. Working across photography, illuminated lightbox installations, painting, fabric, and natural pigment, his practice moves between the studio, the gallery, and the spaces where artists gather to do the deeper work of finding their way back to making.

Drawing from contemplative traditions including the icon makers and mystics, Daniel is a cartographer making maps to the ancient wisdom that recognised a logic woven into the fabric of things. His art seeks to explore the spaces that are not seen, or are in-between places.

His workshops are relational, intuitive and built on the same practice of presence that underpins his creative work.

Daniel’s materials and media are chosen to reflect the intention of his project, whether depicting fragility through ephemeral pieces or colour, vibrance, strength and awe.

ARTIST BIO

Daniel holds a Master of Fine Arts from RMIT (2022–2024). His solo exhibition The Way Forward is Back has toured to Glen Eira Gallery (2024) and Wodonga Cube (2026), with earlier exhibitions at St Cath's Arts Precinct (2023) and Brunswick West (2022). Group exhibitions include seasonal shows at Bright Art Gallery (2024–2025), the RMIT Graduate Show (2023), and Between Reality and Dreamland (Fitzroy, 2023). He curated WEIGHT at Bright Art Gallery in 2025, and his photography features in multiple published photobook anthologies.

His workshop and guiding work draws from the same contemplative wellspring as the art — the conviction that making, at its deepest, is a practice of attention. He is the founder of Regional Culture Care Australia and Alpine Regional Creatives, a member of Regional Arts Victoria, and an advocate for the role of artists in forming cultures of care in regional communities.

He lives and works on the unceded lands of the Waywurru, Taungurung and Dhuduroa Peoples.