Damian Elwes (B. 1960)
Damian Elwes in his studio
Biography
Born in 1960 in the UK, British/American artist Damian Elwes lives and works in Santa Monica, California. He has had over twenty solo exhibitions, and his artworks are highly sought after by collectors and foundations worldwide.
Elwes’s paintings of artists’ studios, both living and departed, transport us into the worlds of artistic geniuses and capture the sublimity of creative experience. He chooses moments in time when an artist is at their most inventive, and then he examines what was going on in their studios. Extensive research such as piecing together past images, hearing stories, and visiting the spaces themselves leads to images that are as fascinating as they are uplifting.
Artwork: DAMIAN ELWES b.1960, Matisse’s Studio in Collioure, 2025, acrylic and chalk on canvas, 168 x 168cm (66 x 66 in.)
Biography
His father and grandfather were both portrait painters, and he was always struck by the simultaneous display of chaos and creativity within their studios. Instead of going to art school, Elwes went to Paris and spent two years drawing and painting the studios of every artist he could find in the 1980s. As a young painter, Elwes was lucky enough to get to know artists like Basquiat, Warhol, Haring and Hockney and to talk with them about their processes. It was Keith Haring who encouraged Elwes to become a painter after a chance encounter. Recreating their studios is a way of continuing to make new discoveries about their work. Elwes pays homage to their creativity while sharing his own.
Elwes’s recent solo exhibitions include Studio Visit (2024), Unit London, London, UK; The Room Where It Happened (2020), Unit London, London, UK; Artist Studios: From Klimt to Kusama (2019), Modernism Inc., San Francisco, USA; and Secrets of the Studio, From Monet to Ai Wei Wei (2018), Museé en Herbe, Paris, France. Group exhibitions include Reinterpretation (2023), Seojung Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; Unit London takeover (2022), Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel; Art and Hope (2021), USC Fisher Museum, Los Angeles, USA; In the Studio, Creation at Work (2019), Musée Eugène-Delacroix, Paris, France; and Independent Vision (2018), Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, USA.
Artwork: DAMIAN ELWES b.1960, Picasso’s Studio Rue de La Boetie, 2012, Acrylic and oill crayon on canvas, 157.5 x 228.6 cm (62 x 90 in.)
News & Press
13 Mar 2025
