Growing up in East Los Angeles, Daniel Antelo was drawn to the murals that brightened his neighborhood. Now he's bringing that artwork to commercial real estate across the country.
At age 38 and known professionally as Downtown Daniel, Antelo has a portfolio of dozens of his own murals on properties from warehouses to skyscrapers. His work has been featured for clients such as Nike; the family of late Los Angeles Lakers basketball superstar Kobe Bryant; and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Clippers and Rams.
"I like bringing something to a property to help people relax," he said by phone on a recent evening from his Los Angeles studio. "Everyone wants to rest their eye for a few seconds and get away from the chaos."
He recently completed a mural that wraps around a 500,000-gallon water tower for a new industrial park in Central Los Angeles. The mural not only helps beautify the local area, but makes the property stand out for lease as increasingly selective tenants focus on the highest-quality properties, said Cushman & Wakefield vice chair John Minervini, the property's leasing broker.
Antelo is "a perfectionist whose soul bleeds onto the canvas," said Jorge Peniche, the branding director for Marathon Clothing who tapped Antelo for oil paintings of musicians such as the late rapper Nipsey Hussle, in a testimony on Antelo's website. "Every stroke of paint is intentional, [he is] a true master at his craft with an unrelenting work ethic to continue to elevate his artistry."
His tallest work was a mural soaring 25 stories high on The Mercury building in Los Angeles' Koreatown neighborhood. But the biggest ones aren't necessarily his favorites.
Antelo's early appreciation for Los Angeles murals led him to take sign graphics courses at the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. The school has trained a number of local artists who made the iconic hand-painted signs, billboards and mural advertisements that have become part of the city's character.
"I was very fortunate to learn from these older guys before they retired," he said.
Career inspiration
Antelo was passing out business cards in downtown Los Angeles about a year after graduating when he noticed workers on suspended scaffolding painting a 14-story-tall mural of the Lakers on the side of the Hotel Figueroa.
"I thought the whole time these were just posters put on the wall. But it was all done by hand," he recalled. When he found out only a small number of painters in Los Angeles were creating this type of building-sized mural ads, he was all in.
"That's when I got the bug," he said.
Today, he reviews assignments from his agent at his downtown Los Angeles studio, where a fire escape lends a view of the skyline he uses for inspiration. He also consults in depth with property owners when starting a mural.
"I speak to them eye to eye, face to face, where I can see their vision," he said. "And I want them to feel a part of it."
Balancing big and small
He adopted the same "pounce transfer" technique used by Michelangelo to reproduce his normal-scale drawings to whatever surface the client needs. To scale up a small drawing for a building, the design is first enlarged on paper and perforated along its outlines. Charcoal "pounce" powder is then dusted through the holes to leave a dotted outline on the building's surface, serving as a guide for the mural.
Antelo had never been on an airplane when he got the opportunity to fly to New York. Once there, he had another adventure: painting a mural in Brooklyn during a snowstorm. He had already taken a 60-hour course to become a certified rigger, learning how to safely navigate the scaffolding and harnesses required for high-rise mural painting.
"It's a very dangerous job,'' Antelo said. "You just want to do the most you can to take care of yourself."
Nowadays, he prefers to let his commercial endeavors support his fine art, which mostly consists of smaller oil paintings. He recently held a gallery show and has another one planned for 2026.
"I love doing the big stuff and coming back and then painting something really small and then going back," Antelo said.
One of his most rewarding experiences was seeing how the mural he painted of Bryant affected the late player's daughter Gianna and wife Vanessa, who came to see the work when it was unveiled.
"I've painted murals celebrating people, and I've painted murals that are more like a memorial, so they all have a different feeling," Antelo said.