Damian Elwes

Who is Damian Elwes?

Damian Elwes is a British artist who lives in the United States. His paintings explore themes such as the cycle of life, creativity and the connections between all living things. He is best known for his series of paintings depicting the studios of the masters. In those paintings he uses the artist studio as a metaphor for all human creativity, indicating that the ability to be creative is the most valuable human asset.

In his most recent work, he combines Duchamp's use of the keyhole and the Surrealist practice of making "double" paintings. Juxtaposing familiar and popular elements that don't usually go together, these paintings examine contemporary issues related to survival and extinction.

He is also known for panoramas of the natural world which venture well beyond the usual boundaries of landscape painting.

His artwork is often monumental and three-dimensional, such as a vast painting in which visitors walk from room to room on the ground floor of the "Villa La Californie ", to witness the extent of Picasso's creativity in April 1956 or an immense landscape painting on the ground, "Amazon", on which visitors can walk above the flowering plants of a cloud forest and search for the source of the river.