Interest and training as an artist helped Daniel van Benthuysen establish a career of 29 years as an art director and director of design for Newsday, the Long Island Newspaper. In 2007, he left the newspaper and began teaching courses in visual journalism at Hofstra University. A constant through all of these occupations has been his landscape painting, originally in watercolor and in more recent years in oil.

Benthuysen studied in the early 70s at Tulane University in New Orleans and for the last ten years has served as a monitor (a sort of teaching assistant) at the Art Students League of New York.

He is represented by Upstream Gallery in Dobbs Ferry, NY, and UGallery online (based in San Francisco.) He has shown as a member of the Salmagundi Club in NYC, and in juried exhibits around the greater New York area. Benthuysen also regularly participates in plein air events in and around Long Island.