Dan Rawlings

Born in Watford in 1979 and raised in Essex, Dan Rawlings lives and works in Gloucestershire. His practice is animated by a sympathy for unloved and forgotten relics and a fascination with the resilience of the natural world, which he channels into visions of landscapes and objects slowly reclaimed by vegetation and decay.

He is best known for his mastery of hand-plasma-cutting: intricate floral and botanical patterns carved directly into salvaged metal — vintage advertising plates, fuel cans, road signage, oil drums and entire vehicles. He treats no technique or substrate as off-limits, extending the practice into large-scale sculptural installations including silos and vans, often lit from within so that light projects through the cut-outs and casts elaborate shadow patterns across the surrounding walls.

His reputation grew through a series of ambitious institutional projects: Future Returns, a plasma-cut oil tanker installed inside a nineteenth-century church at Lincolnshire's 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, and Short Haul, an elaborately hand-cut light aircraft shown at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin during its 2019 Biennale. In 2021 the Saatchi Gallery invited him to create an off-site installation for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show — the gallery's first ever presence at the event.

Represented since 2019 by Galerie Chenus Longhi in Paris, he also works with StolenSpace and the Saatchi Gallery in London and Galerie LeRoyer. In 2024 the newly established Renault Fund for Art and Culture commissioned him to transform both a vintage 1973 Renault 5 and the new R5 E-Tech into artworks, cementing his reputation as an artist bridging fine art, industrial heritage and environmental commentary.