Co.Lab Gallery presents
DAMON DOWBAK
OPEN HORIZON
OPENING FRIDAY APRIL 26TH 2024, 7-10 PM.
EXHIBITION CLOSES MAY 12TH, 2024.
DAMON DOWBAK began his arts career as a photographer and painter.
“The idea of playing with light and colour has always been intriguing to me. Using the experience and concepts of a photographer and painter I began to transfer those skills and concepts into the design and fabrication of glass installations. As an extension of that exploration, I began to combine painted canvas and carved plexi-glass. I am inspired by how light can be manipulated and played with as part of the artistic process. While working in the medium of glass I developed an even deeper understanding and respect for the role of light. Working with light and colour has taken me into even deeper realms of the creative process, influenced by the natural world, poetry, and music.
I am presented with the challenges of bringing elements together. Finding where they converge. Although the various forms of animate and inanimate life in the world seem separate and dissimilar, they are, at the most profound level, inseparable, similar, and one.”
The works are abstracted from memory. They are meditations on nature and urban scapes; specifically they display textural variations of the elements OF water, rock AND air. Colour is selected for its emotional presence. Dowbak’s art explores pure transparent colour activated by light reflecting off the painted surface. The artist seeks to integrate emotion, intuition with breath, through the gesture of the hand. The spontaneous creation of the works displays the effect of erosion, growth and the transitions that are caused by the action/reaction of building layers.
ARTIST BIO
Beginning as a painter and photographer in my early years, DOWBAK took up stained glass in HIS mid twenties and IT has REMAINED HIS main work for the last forty years. HE WORKS as a visual artist with various mediums: Stained glass – leaded glass, painting and silver staining, abrasive etching, kiln formed glass, acrylic paint on canvas, collage, graphic (Adobe Illustrator) photography (film and Adobe Photoshop) and sculpture (wood, metal, glass) AND AS A Musician, from 1972 to present, as a performer and recording artist.
“Whichever medium I chose to work in, drawing has been the basis from which I work. Observation of natural phenomena, paying close attention to the interplay of transitions in the natural world provides the subject for my work. Abstracting the visual and finding the essence of the land, the boreal forest where we live, is a primary theme that runs through my work. I work to find the places where the mediums converge. What are the commonalities and how can they work together. In painting, the reflection of light on canvas. In glass, the transmission of light through coloured glass. In photography, the transmission of light through glass onto a sensor. My current work explores the interactions between these mediums. Through meditation on the natural world the process of creating becomes a source of calm and rejuvenation.”
Artist/designer of Kleewyck Stained Glass Studio
Thunder Bay, Ontario 1976-2019
Creating stained glass works for residential, liturgical, commercial applications. Commissioned works in numerous churches in Thunder Bay and the region. Public and commercial installations including Fort William Historical Park, Ontario Government Building, Community Economic Development Corporation of Thunder Bay and hundreds private residential commissions. Traditional stained glass techniques of leaded glass, painting, silver staining and firing, abrasive etching, laminating, glass fusing are used in the studio.
All works are designed (colour scale drawings, maquettes) and fabricated in studio.
Damon is currently working on painting, photography and music projects.
