The Vision of Damian Elwes

Author, art historian and curator Fred Hoffman breaks down the singular practice of his long-time acquaintance Damian Elwes, and enlightens the reader as to how a single-minded artistic approach such as Elwes’ can elicit multifaceted results, transcending the material environments he depicts.

The Vision of Damian Elwes
Fred Hoffman, 2024

I

Rare is the artist relying on a singular concept to drive their creative output. When confronted with such an artist, one is inclined to assume a kind of conservatism, thinking he or she is only comfortable with a limited approach to their chosen medium of expression. On the other hand, returning to the same concept enables a deepening, the revealing of something less obvious. In the case of Damian Elwes, his drive to tell the story of other artists’ studio lives has afforded him the means to expose what lies beneath our object/image-laden world and peer into something less material.

II

The only thing obvious in a Damian Elwes painting is his choice of subject matter. Damian paints the studios of many of the most famous, highly recognised artists of the 20th century. In fact, it is because these artists have essentially achieved celebrity status that we are eager to peer into his paintings ⎯ hungry to know more.

Our involvement is established a priori; and, of course, is enhanced by many of Damian’s decisions as to what is included and the specific view rendered. While he controls what we observe and many of the conclusions we reach, our commitment to become engaged begins with our admiration of his chosen artists.

His pursuit of historical accuracy and attention to detail makes our engagement even more exciting. We crave every piece of information he provides us with. And here it needs to be stated: Damian is relentless in his need to know everything possible, down to the minutiae his artists have chosen to include in their laboratories of creation.

Damian Elwes is a contemporary art detective. He makes an unconditional commitment to accumulate all available documentation of what these artists have chosen to surround themselves with in the studio. In the end, what he depicts is the result of hours, days, weeks, even months of research, scouring every publication and archive where he might possibly learn of each artefact and image that his artist might have considered as source material. And, of course, the internet has significantly aided Damian’s discovery process. But the internet, libraries and photo archives have only taken him so far. In many cases, his research has required journeying to these studios. In some instances, the studio still exists, while others are long gone; and he is only able to engage the shell of the space previously occupied by the artist.

Damian is first to admit that he takes artistic licence in the placement of objects and materials he knows were of importance to his subject’s creative process. Damian is not simply painting a one-to-one depiction of what is recorded in a photograph. While he only includes “information” he knows was of interest to the artist under consideration, he does not feel obligated to precise historical accuracy as to placement.

In those cases where Damian’s focus is on one dominant painting, he never renders a fully completed copy. Part of his practice relies on leaving something out, essentially declaring to the viewer that they are engaging a unique, never-before-executed work of art. 

While the primary subject of a Damian Elwes studio is the detailed focus on a specific work in progress and its source and physical materials, he intensifies our engagement in his rendering of the relationship of the studio to its surroundings. Damian makes sure that what we now view is consistent with what the artist would have experienced.

Especially relevant to this group of works is the view beyond the studio onto its surroundings. While the viewer is invited to “spy” on the artist at work, we are assured of an escape route beyond this private realm.

III

The rigour of Damian Elwes’ practice cannot be overstated. He is committed to correctly and accurately conveying the information required to document each studio rendering. One example is Roy Lichtenstein’s 1964 downtown New York studio, where Roy created his major “comic strip” paintings. The challenge was to convincingly portray the dot pattern in Roy’s heads. As Damian recalls, “Having made a complete mess of the dots by spraying paint through a screen, I ultimately enlisted the assistance of my daughter.” For eight days Damian and Cosima were down on their knees, with Cosima first making tiny dots with a magic marker through every minuscule hole of a mesh screen, followed by Damian painting each dot by hand with a brush. Having approached the tedium of this process with patience and a positive state of mind, Damian was rewarded. Not only do the thousands of hand painted dots compellingly capture the same effect achieved by Lichtenstein, but he was, unexpectedly, able to admire the uniqueness of each dot. Their dense combinations enhance our engagement with this work.

A similar “magic” is achieved in Damian’s detailed recreation of Keith Haring’s painted terracotta pot. Almost requiring a magnifying glass to aid in painting, as well as in our viewing, the portrayal of this single object is testimony to the intense focus of his practice. While the viewer delightfully takes in the plethora of images and objects seemingly scattered throughout the studio, we continually return to his terracotta pot, marvelling at the multiple narratives unfolding around its surface.

IV/1

In viewing Keith Haring’s studio, we are immediately drawn to the dominant far left image of his iconic Dancing Dog. Facilitating our tour through the studio, Damian employs two other artistic devices, devoting close to 40% of his canvas to the rendering of the upward-tilting studio floor. It almost feels that we step into the picture, moving from the work’s frontal plane towards the rear of the space. We do not stop there; we are invited to move beyond the studio, engaging a slice of the Manhattan milieu. We move back and forth between the plethora of visual information presented in the studio and the world outside. Haring’s studio is filled with luminosity coming from the sky, evidenced in the shadows of objects cast onto the studio floor. Having created a dialogue between the “natural” world and a fictive studio depiction, the interaction between interior and exterior becomes an additional subject of the work. Damian is perhaps trying to convey what it is like when a graffiti artist moves from the outside world into a studio.

IV/2

Reflecting back many years ago when Damian first began his series of artists’ studios, he gave considerable focus to the work of both Picasso and Matisse. In fact, several of his most resolved and insightful works, including the example in this exhibition, are Picasso’s studios, both in Paris and the South of France. Equally engaging, are his Matisse studios in a variety of locations. In this exhibition, Matisse’s Studio, La Regina, Nice is particularly revealing. A good portion of the scene focuses the viewer beyond the studio. Here Damian portrays a lush Mediterranean landscape culminating where the sea ends and a luminous cloud-filled sky streams a magical atmosphere back into the space, illuminating Matisse’s figural composition, (La Musique, 1939). While we may take for granted the “naturalness” of Damian’s focus on his view out the window, I would suggest that he took away from this work an artistic strategy adaptable to the depictions of even urban-oriented artists such as Haring and Hirst.

IV/3

Probably the most “radical” work in the exhibition, is the portrayal of Damien Hirst’s studio on the banks of the Thames in Hammersmith. Pushed almost to the extreme, the distinction between inside-outside further breaks down. Now there is even less demarcation between where one ends and the other begins. Damian’s focus on atmospheric illumination is so pervasive that the depiction of Hirst’s own artworks becomes secondary, an almost minor consideration. Interestingly, Hirst’s two paintings leaning against the two glass side walls, also depict the view from studio to the outside; and may have provided Damian some guidance in his approach to the subject. While Hirst’s studio pictures clearly define interior/exterior boundaries, Damian, taking encouragement from Hirst, pushes these boundaries to the extent that for a moment one almost (mistakenly) concludes that the glass wall at the back of the studio is also a Hirst painting. Damian’s choice to depict this particular Hirst studio reaffirms his interest in how an exterior atmosphere brings to life the elements of the studio.

IV/4

Elwes has also included in the exhibition a small gouache on board depicting Edvard Munch’s Outdoor Studio at Skrubben, Norway. Here the play between exterior and interior further dissolves. Light and atmosphere, making up so much a part of our experience of landscape, become the subject of Munch’s remarkable transcendental depiction of the birth of luminosity at the moment of sunrise.

V

One strong take away from this particular group of Damian Elwes paintings is the upbeat nature of his world view. Damian has gifted us uplifting environments. They make us feel content. These paintings declare that light itself is the subject of a Damian Elwes work. Bathed in a purity of light, we sense the possibility of transcending our material-filled lives.

Damian transforms some of our assumptions about the urban milieu. His characterisation of the Basquiat, Haring and Lichtenstein studios are pleasurable and comforting. When focused on downtown New York, whether in the 60s or 80s, the luminosity of exterior space filters back into these artists’ studios. Having filled them with light, Damian encourages us to explore their contents. 

It is not clear how Damian Elwes arrived at this place where the distinction between exterior and interior space is diminished through his treatment of light and atmosphere. Because so much of his concern is historical accuracy (what I call “factual accumulation”) I think he somewhat innocently stumbled upon the subject of light. One of Damian’s crowning achievements is his ability to tell the stories of our “art heroes” in such a manner that we are invited to lighten our load, relieved, at least a bit, of the burden accompanying our urban lives.

© Fred Hoffman, 2024