The estate of Dan Rice (1926-2003) is represented exclusively by Philip Douglas Fine Art.

Dan Rice was raised in Long Beach California. A serious trumpet player by age 15 he was filling in with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton Bands when they played the Long Beach area c.1941-'43. At age 17 he joined the US Navy and for three years served in WWII. Shortly after the Navy and on a tip from his brother, he drove east and enrolled at Black Mountain College (BMC) the influential Bauhaus inspired American liberal arts college located in Asheville, North College. Originally intending to pursue music Rice quickly realized music was not his calling and enrolled in painting, drawing, design classes. During his time at BMC 1946-1956 he was both a student & mentor  and later was invited to be an instructor. He studied & taught at BMC and became friends with a stunning array of talented art students & instructors including Joseph Albers, Annie Albers, Ruth Asawa, Kenneth Noland, John Chamberlain, Joseph Fiore, Willem & Elaine de Kooning, Jorge Fick, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Rauschenberg, Jack Tworkov, Cy Twombly, Ben Shahn, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley. Many of his BMC colleagues became close long term professional relationships as well as friendships. Dan Rice is included in a number of books published on Black Mountain College in the context of these friendships including 'Leap Before You Look, Black Mountain College 1933-1957' by Helen Molesworth; 'Black Mountain Days' by Michael Rumaker; 'Dan Rice AT Black Mountain College: Painter Among The Poets, 'AN Emotional Memoir of Franz Kline' by Fielding Dawson. After BMC closed Rice moved to New York c. 1956-57 and quickly found gallery representation showing in Poindexter Gallery and Stable Gallery group exhibitions. 1959 he joined the blue chip Catherine Viviano Gallery who gave Rice five solo exhibitions between 1960-1970. Viviano placed many of Rice’s oils in important private & public collections including Yale University Art Gallery, Princeton University Art Museum, Dillard University, The Wadsworth Antheneum, Mary Washington College and more. Rice first came to New York City in 1946 during his first semester a Black Mountain College student and through friendships there entered the rich artistic milieu of the New York art world often hanging for many hours at The Cedar Tavern drinking and debating art with friends Franz Kline, Robert Creeley, Fieldling Dawson. In 1948 he left BMC and enrolled at MIT study & received a degree in architecture then came back to Black Mountain College in 1952 to take part in a variety of teaching/advisory roles for Charle Olson the new BMC rector often organizing student art classes, art happenings, student exhibitions, poetry & instructor seminars and Black Mountain Review poetry publications up thru 1956 just before the college closed. His architecture skills came to good use and he helped design & rebuild BMC classrooms & mechanicals. At BMC in 1952 Rice became especially close to Franz Kline and BMC poets/ instructors Robert Creeley & Fielding Dawson often returning to New York on weekends with them to see gallery & museums exhibitions and hang out at Cedar Tavern with Kline & de Kooning and there met Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko. 

When Rice moved full time to NYC he was quickly invited to exhibit with Poindexter Gallery (1955), Stable Gallery (1956) in group exhibitions. In 1959 he began exhibiting with Catherine Viviano Gallery; she gave him his first solo show in 1960 four more solo exhibitions thru 1970. In 1958 & 1959 Rice was hired as Mark Rothko’s studio assistant during the creation of Rothko’s Seagram’s Museums project. Dan Rice & his family became close to the Rothko family and remained close after the Seagram's project. Later Rice worked with the estate of both Kline & Rothko as an advisor to each artist’s estate for years forward performing important duties to insure their legacy. After Viviano Gallery closed in 1970 he continued exhibiting having solo shows at Maxwell Gallery in San Francisco, three solo shows at Nightingale Gallery in Toronto CD and university art museum exhibitions at Princeton, Yale, University of Virginia, SUNY Buffalo, U.of Connecticut, Dillard U. in New Orleans and more. He taught at The Art Students League in New York, Buffalo State University, U Mass Amherst, Brown University & U. Conn. Around 1985 Dan Rice moved permanently to the Connecticut shoreline and continued to teach exhibit and held forth weekly studio classes unashamedly named 'The Friday Night Painters’ who met at his studio. He continued an active exhibitions & teaching schedule until 2001. Dan Rice died in Connecticut in 2003.

PDFA has held two solo exhibitions of Rice's work; "Dan Rice Fourteen Oils 1959-2001", and "Dan Rice, New York Paintings 1959-1976" which was accompanied by a  1997 interview by Mary Emma Harris as part of a series she created of oral interviews of former artists associated with Black Mountain College plus an essay by the artist “Dan Rice In His Own Words”  provided by the Dan Rice estate.