Person

Damian Elwes

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Overview

Dusan Damian Cary Elwes (born 10 August 1960) is a British artist with studios in Los Angeles and the Colombian rainforest. His paintings explore themes such as the cycle of life and creativity. These artworks can be monumental and three-dimensional, such as a painting in which visitors walk from room to room on the ground floor of the "Villa La Californie" (2006–2018), to witness the extent of Pablo Picasso's creativity in April, 1956 or an immense landscape painting on the ground, Amazon (1999), on which visitors can walk above the exotic, flowering plants of a cloud forest and search for the source of the river. In 2018, the Musée en Herbe in Paris hosted "Secrets of the Studio, from Claude Monet to Ai Weiwei," a retrospective of Elwes' Artist Studio paintings. These paintings transport viewers directly into the worlds of creative geniuses from the 19th century to the present. More than one hundred thousand people attended his immersive and interactive exhibition. Visitors could walk through Picasso's Villa in Cannes or roam around in a VR painting of Brancusi's original Montparnasse workshop. Work In the early 1980s, Elwes lived in New York, where he was an early exponent of graffiti. There he met Keith Haring who encouraged Elwes to start painting. Some of his first paintings were chosen by the eminent London art dealer, Robert Fraser, to be included in a graffiti exhibition with Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, 11 August – 23 September 1984. In 1988, Elwes and his first wife, Christina Oxenberg, bought land in southern Colombia overlooking a rain forest and spent five years building a house there. By 1998, Elwes had returned to live there with his second wife, Lewanne. He has created four vast, interactive paintings which viewers can walk around inside. A floor painting, Fallen Tree (1997) describes the cycle of life in one of the last surviving forests of mahogany. In a clearing in the forest, one old tree has fallen to the ground and is decaying. New saplings can be seen growing from the dead tree. This same cycle exists in painting and in all forms of innovation. So, while this work might be seen as a spur for conscience, it also contains an indication of Elwes' confidence in the power and continuity of creativity. In London, 2010, Elwes exhibited an even larger floor painting about the origin of life.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Overview

Dusan Damian Cary Elwes (born 10 August 1960) is a British artist with studios in Los Angeles and the Colombian rainforest. His paintings explore themes such as the cycle of life and creativity. These artworks can be monumental and three-dimensional, such as a painting in which visitors walk from room to room on the ground floor of the "Villa La Californie" (2006–2018), to witness the extent of Pablo Picasso's creativity in April, 1956 or an immense landscape painting on the ground, Amazon (1999), on which visitors can walk above the exotic, flowering plants of a cloud forest and search for the source of the river. In 2018, the Musée en Herbe in Paris hosted "Secrets of the Studio, from Claude Monet to Ai Weiwei," a retrospective of Elwes' Artist Studio paintings. These paintings transport viewers directly into the worlds of creative geniuses from the 19th century to the present. More than one hundred thousand people attended his immersive and interactive exhibition. Visitors could walk through Picasso's Villa in Cannes or roam around in a VR painting of Brancusi's original Montparnasse workshop. Work In the early 1980s, Elwes lived in New York, where he was an early exponent of graffiti. There he met Keith Haring who encouraged Elwes to start painting. Some of his first paintings were chosen by the eminent London art dealer, Robert Fraser, to be included in a graffiti exhibition with Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, 11 August – 23 September 1984. In 1988, Elwes and his first wife, Christina Oxenberg, bought land in southern Colombia overlooking a rain forest and spent five years building a house there. By 1998, Elwes had returned to live there with his second wife, Lewanne. He has created four vast, interactive paintings which viewers can walk around inside. A floor painting, Fallen Tree (1997) describes the cycle of life in one of the last surviving forests of mahogany. In a clearing in the forest, one old tree has fallen to the ground and is decaying. New saplings can be seen growing from the dead tree. This same cycle exists in painting and in all forms of innovation. So, while this work might be seen as a spur for conscience, it also contains an indication of Elwes' confidence in the power and continuity of creativity. In London, 2010, Elwes exhibited an even larger floor painting about the origin of life.

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).