Jean Daniel

Southern artist, Jean Daniel, spread art along the coast from Key West to Eau Gallie, Florida. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Jean grew up in a harness horse racing family. Her step-father, Carl Hatchell, initiated her gentle and profound love of animals, particularly horses, that later emerged in many of Jean?s paintings. While Jean?s mother, Eva May (Wiggins) Hatchell, taught Jean all the nuances of what it meant to be a Southern lady, she mastered both decorum and being a ?tom-boy? who wore feminine skirts over riding pants until out of Eva?s sight, when off came the skirt and out came the girl who chose animals over tea parties. When Carl began semi-retirement and limited himself to training and racing his horses at Ben White Raceway, the family settled in Winter Park where Jean attended St. James High School. She became their first female drum majorette and excelled in tap dance, art, academics, as well as playing saxophone and flute. Her musical gifts instilled a life-long love and appreciation for classical music and her interest in art led to many years of studying the great oil painters. By the 1960s she would demonstrate a mastery of oil mixing and painting like the masters she studied. While in high school, Jean worked for Lens Robins Art Studio where she trained in all phases of photography and oil painting.ÿ Aching to attend college, Jean went along with her parents wishes that she enter Orlando beauty contests instead. Her beauty, poise and talent won her both a title and a husband, Eugene Morrison Riley, a traveling salesman from Dora, Alabama. They married and eventually had daughter, Vicki, in 1949. The marriage failed and Jean returned to Winter Park with Vicki, where she worked for Orlando attorney, William O?Donnel and later, the Orlando School Board Finance department as stenographer and bookkeeper. In 1953, Jean remarried Louis Mayo Burts and in 1955, the family moved to Key West, Florida where Jean was a community leader for many years. Her services included Presidency and Tournament Chairman of the PGA Ladies Golf Association of the Key West Country Club, member of Junior Women?s Club, Garden Club, and Art and Historical Society of Key West, and historian of Key West Art Center. Jean also served on the community list for the Admiral governing all naval facilities in Key West area. Her duties included meeting and welcoming visiting foreign and American diplomats and dignitaries at naval ceremonies and social functions. Even more importantly to Jean, she also flourished as an artist. Because of her talent and desire to learn, she was mentored by seven great visiting artists to the island. Jean also mentored other artists, including one as young as ten, David Brown, whose gifted talent under Jean?s guidance was praised in a June 14, 1964 Key West Citizen article. She became one of the original founding members of the Key West Art Center in 1955 and her paintings exhibited at East Martello Museum regularly for decades. Her painting of the Red Barn Theatre hung in the Key West Playhouse during the 1960s and early 1970s. Best known for her portraits in stunning realism that captured the ?soul? of the subject, Jean struggled with giving clients the realism they wanted and what she really wished to paint. In the mid 1970s, Jean worked for Georgetown Ethan Allen Furniture in Pompano, Florida. She turned down a promotion to be the buyer for two additional stores in Miami and Dania to move with her husband to Jacksonville Beach. Jean freelanced again with painting and art lessons. By the 1980s, she had moved on to abstract expressionism as well as photography and spent the rest of her life photographing and painting only what she wished to paint in the style she chose for the subject: stil

Jean Daniel

July 24, 1930 - January 31, 2009