Pearl Lam (林明珠): This is Pearl Lam Podcast. I am really happy today. I’m in LA and I got Damien Elwes who’s sitting beside me. We will have a conversation today. Tell the audience who you are, since most of the audience may not be from the art world.

Damian Elwes: Yes, I was born in England and I’m an English painter and I moved to America to come to university in 19, 8080 and I’ve started working painting soon after university and have made several different series of paintings. The most recent one is a series of paintings that describe artists, studios, my favourite artists, and that’s the one that seems to have taken off.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): What is interesting about you is, Damien, you are self-taught. When you went to university, you went to Harvard, right? That’s correct. And then you were studying script writing, if I remember. That’s right. How could script writing turn into an artist? You’re supposing a writer and a writer doing an artist, being an artist. I mean, this is very fascinating transformation.

Damian Elwes: Well, first of all, yes. So when I went to got into Harvard, it was because of my mathematics. And so they put me immediately into an economics course with very high level economics. I just, you know, it just wasn’t for me. And I began reading a lot of literature and I began playwriting and storytelling. I really fell in love with storytelling. And I think that that’s what I’m still doing. Some historians are out there writing, and I’m expressing it all in paintings.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So, so while you were doing your script writing, I mean, this is also creative, whatever you do is I mean, you must be very excited about it because you like to learn.

Damian Elwes: I love learning. I just that’s, you know, that is absolutely. I love reading. I love learning. And, and, but I will say that, you know, my playwriting professor at the end of four years at Harvard, he said I have a gift for you. And he gave me Matisse’s palette knife that had been given to him by Alice B Toklas.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh wow, so he was encouraging you to paint?

Damian Elwes: Yes, well, I was a bit shocked. I said, so you don’t like my playwriting? And he said, I’m not saying I don’t like your playwriting. I love your storytelling, Damian, but I’m just saying that you know that it’s good to experiment as well. And it’s not beyond the realm of possibility because your father and grandfather were painters. And I said, well, thank you, but put it away.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So I mean as, as, as you mentioned just now, your father and your grandfather, they’re painters, they’re artists. Why did you try to escape from?

Damian Elwes: Absolutely.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): This profession, because I know if your parents are and and are painters and artists, you don’t want to come be compared to them. That’s right. So it’s really tough if you have a very successful family, one of them being a great artist, yes was.

Damian Elwes: I think it was very tough for my father, but, and I saw that, I witnessed that because his father, my grandfather Simon, was a famous painter in England. He was the royal portrait painter. And I’m told that the royal family liked his paintings above all, that there was their favourite portraits. And then my father didn’t go to art school. And I remember that his father was always saying to him, you should have gone to the Slade, you should have gone to this art school. Then they both died when I was 14 and left.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Both died at the same time.

Damian Elwes: And left me all of their equipment and their easels and their pallets and their brushes and their paints. And I was so sad about my father’s death that I just put it all away in storage and I locked it away and didn’t want to be a painter after that.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Do you think that at that time you knew you did recognise you have the gift?

Damian Elwes: Yes, I, I kind of knew that because actually my father had come to me a couple of years earlier and said that that he was trying to organise a show at the Royal Academy of three generations of Elwes’s artists and could I do a painting for that show? It never really happened, but yes, I’d always known that I could draw and paint.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): How? I mean, OK, after university you, you must feel that you have to do something. And so at that point that you take take all the risk and then push yourself to become an artist. Tell us.

Damian Elwes: About yes, well, the the only kind of legitimate job that I ever had was working on a film. And so I went to New York and my stepfather was a filmmaker. So I had grown up with filmmaking as well, which is storytelling and grown up around film studios which had huge lots of mediaeval castles and western towns. So I love storytelling, I love playing, I love that kind of thing. So anyway, on the set of that film, at that point, I had told my stepfather that, you know, I was really interested in writing and perhaps films and maybe one day directing films. So I worked on that film and it was terribly boring because they they, they gave me a walkie-talkie and said, okay, you’re in charge of crowd control and keep people away from the film. So I never saw the film being actually shot. I was just keeping people. And one day I was keeping a crowd in the subway station. When I let them out, there was Keith Haring drawing on black posters with white chalk. And all I said to him was your job looks more fun than mine. And he said, well, can you paint? And I said, no, not really, Sir, can you draw? And I said, yes, I can. He said, well, that’s what I’m doing, so pick up some chalk and help me. Anyway, we became really good friends and we talked about painting and poets, our favourite poets, our favourite artists. And, and he recognised in me that there was a painter. And he said to me at the end of one of our evening together, he said, listen, Damien, you know, next time I see you, I’m not going to talk to you unless you’ve done a painting. Because I know that once you’ve done one painting, you’ll be hooked like I was, and you’ll keep on painting the rest of your life. And he was right.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So when do you make your first painting?

Damian Elwes: So that was the week after of seeing Keith. He had said to me. I said well I can’t paint. He said we’ll go across the street, see that hardware store, buy 6 cans of spray paint, different colours, find an empty wall. As you can see, they’re everywhere in the city. And when you draw with spray painting, you suddenly have a painting. And I said, OK, well, that sounds really fun, I will do it. Then I saw him a few days later and I hadn’t done a painting. And again, he was saying the same thing. And, and then I was very lucky because the film director I was working for, suddenly his build. He was moving from one office to another and there was an empty building. I had the keys to it and it wasn’t going to be demolished for a year. So that became my studio in New York. That’s where I did my first painting.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Were you excited? How did you feel when you’re after you did your first painting? Share with us.

Damian Elwes: Well, I passed out because I hadn’t put a mask on and I hadn’t opened the windows. I didn’t know about ventilation while you’re spray painting. And so I passed out and I woke up and I blew my nose as hard as I could into my sleeve and spirals of coloured plastic came out of my nose. And I thought, Oh my God, I’ve killed myself on my first day of painting. And I looked around and I saw Venice, Italy on one wall and the skyline of New York on another wall, and my friends from Harvard on another wall. And I realised, my God, I did all of this. I do love painting and it was from my subconscious and I was hooked after that. And I filled that building full of paintings. Even on the roof, I covered the roof, I covered the whole roof in paintings as well. So you could go up above from another building and look down and see these gigantic paintings.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): OK, so you paint, but how do you sell? Because doesn’t make a living. Because if you just, you know, paint on the wall, how, how do you make a living?

Damian Elwes: I was must be the luckiest artist in the world because within six months I had the top dealer on Cork St in Robert Fraser came to New York to find graffiti artists and somebody, I think Keith, told him, you know, there’s an English graffiti artists on West 56th St and he said well that can’t be. That’s why I’ve come here. There’s no graffiti in London, nobody’s doing graffiti, so we’ll go and have a look. And he was incredulous, but he came and he loved the paintings and I ended up being represented by him and advised by him, which is so important to find a dealer like you or Robert, somebody who’s able to give such great advice. I love it.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then when was your first show with him then?

Damian Elwes: My well, that wasn’t to be. He offered me a show on Cork St and it was going to be in six months. And I said, listen, Robert, I don’t just want to paint graffiti. I don’t feel like I’m authentically A graffiti artist. And maybe, you know, Andy Warhol said you’re learning to be famous for 15 minutes in the future. I don’t want to be famous as a graffiti artist, so I’m going to go to Paris and learn to paint with a brush. And he said, well, how are you going to do that? I said, well. I’m don’t know, he said. Well, what you should do is apprentice yourself to an artist, a painter that you like. You can be cleaning their palettes and preparing the paint in the morning and you’ll learn and you’ll see them painting. You’ll be desperate to paint after a while. And so I went to Paris with that idea, realised I didn’t know anyone in Paris, let alone painters. And so quickly I was then a few, after a few days there, I suddenly had a brain wave that what I would do is go and find every artist studio that I could in Paris, knock on the door, ask the artist, can I make a drawing of your studio or a painting? And they would open the door with a chain and go, who are you? I don’t know you. And I was like, well, you know, I’ve heard that your studio is really cool. And they say, OK, if you sit really quietly in the corner, don’t disturb me, don’t say a word, you can stay the day. And for two years, I visited maybe 100 different contemporary studios and watched them painting. So I learned how like that, yes, that’s how I learned to paint and with a brush. And unfortunately, in that. Unfortunately, Robert Fraser died of AIDS. And it still gives me shivers. I mean, it is.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then what? Still that. Yeah. OK. You went to. You went to Paris. OK. Obviously your family has money. You went to Paris, but.

Damian Elwes: Well, my family.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): That is the money that your family gave.

Damian Elwes: You No, no, no. So how do you my family? I so I after, after New York, after the abandoned building, I came back to London to see Robert and I started painting. We had a big house and my family had a big house in the country, but they were very unhappy that I was painting. They expected me to do other things. So, you know, my father, my stepfather said, look, you can go to law school, but I’m not sending you to art school. And so I was painting away. And I thought, OK, what I’ve got to do is Robert did sell a few paintings, but I did a little tiny show of just my etchings of some etchings that I made, and I sold about 3000 pounds of etchings. And that was the money I used to go to Paris.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then in Paris, one year, 100 artists. How do you make the money selling your painting on the street? Like like like these artists.

Damian Elwes: Well, it’s funny that you should say that. It’s funny that you should say that because I actually, for a while I, I painted on the bridges in Paris. I painted the.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I’m not surprised because I know several Chinese artists.

Damian Elwes: And people would come along and throw money at me, you know, but I wasn’t, I didn’t. That’s not how I, I know. It’s the £3000 in those days did last. Yeah. Lasted for about a year. My, my, my family. Did you know they cut me off financially? Which was a great thing actually, because they.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Cut you off financially because they didn’t want you to become an artist.

Damian Elwes: Correct.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): To be an artist, you have to know hunger.

Damian Elwes: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then it pushed you to go forward.

Damian Elwes: I think it’s a great thing anyway, you know, I think you know, if you rely on your parents money, it’s much more difficult. But if you go out and do something for yourself, of course it gets better and better.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Wonderful. OK, so when do you meet your wife?

Damian Elwes: I met Lewanne. I met Lewanne. I was doing an exhibition here in Los Angeles.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So, OK, so after Paris, you say that exactly 1 year?

Damian Elwes: No, two years, two years. So you, I mean you must be.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Fluent in French, right?

Damian Elwes: Fluent in French and I can’t well they never let me speak when I was in the season so it wasn’t difficult. I didn’t learn very well French, but I could get by.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So your 3000 pounds lasts you one year? Yes, your next year.

Damian Elwes: Well.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Were you saying?

Damian Elwes: The yes, I was, I was always there. I was I’ve, I’ve always been very lucky and people have always wanted to buy my paintings. That’s all I can say. I even then little water colours and drawings that I was making, people would would buy them from me.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So you never got worried and your and your family could not sway you yes to do as they take proper job right?

Damian Elwes: Exactly. Exactly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So after two years you decided to not to return to UK, but to go to not even New York to go to LA. Why LA?

Damian Elwes: As I said, I grew up in the film business. And so one, at one point my stepfather had made a film called Equus and it was being nominated or Richard Burton was nominated for an Academy Award. My stepfather didn’t want to go, so he sent me with my mother to accompany my mother. I think I was about 16. And we came to the Academy Awards. It was the 50th Academy Awards and we went to all the parties. Now all the parties in those days was only three parties. And so the other days of the week was nothing. So I realised after Paris, that’s where I could do a show. I could come to Los Angeles and do a pop up show just before the Academy Awards. And sure enough, it worked. And it was full of movie stars, and all the movie stars brought my paintings, and that’s how I started.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You mean 16 years old? You have this this, this memory, yes. And then you still, so you still understand the market. Wow, you have a lot of you have a lot of balls just to go.

Damian Elwes: I did. Yeah. Yeah, I did.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): That’s very brave.

Damian Elwes: I did, and then the next year I did it again and the show got even bigger and even more so. You just.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Go. You just went to L You just went to LA? Yeah. And then rented a.

Damian Elwes: Rented a little space, an artist’s studio and did a pop up show in an artist’s studio.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And next to the.

Damian Elwes: In Well, the first one was in Venice. The next one was in Venice. The.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Next. But how do you invite everybody? Your father help you to invite?

Damian Elwes: You he certainly had some connections yes and and my brother, both of my brothers were also in the film business so they had lots of.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Connections, and they’re supportive of and of you.

Damian Elwes: They were, they were, They helped me and they gave me telephone numbers and addresses of people to invite.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And so at least part of your family supporting you?

Damian Elwes: Absolutely.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): To become an artist.

Damian Elwes: Yeah, no, my stepfather ended up loving my paintings and and yeah, he.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And so when you call up these people, they did not say forget about so you mentioned you are the stepson of your father, the brother of yes, they all came and support you.

Damian Elwes: They, they all came, I couldn’t even believe and more not even their friends Bruce Willis to me more suddenly came in and bought 7 paintings from one of the shows. They came to the next show and bought more and, and it was like that. It was it just the word spread and since my paintings were out there in all of these movie star houses, everybody else saw them and wanted to get them as well. So. So it was very.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So financially you were very successful then?

Damian Elwes: Yes, it was. It was OK.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Were you? Was it a little because you know artists should suffer? How come you never?

Damian Elwes: No, I did. I do, I did.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Suffering is nothing.

Damian Elwes: It does. It’s never, it’s never. We never. My wife, My wife Lewanne. So I met her on the third time I was doing the Academy Award show. By then it was in a gallery. A gallery had invited me to do it on West and Lewanne was 22 years old and working in the next door gallery to me. And I invited her and she came along and I had to watch that was so successful that show that the press was asking me a question. Can I pose with Rob Lowe and whatever. And and so I had to watch out of the corner of my eye as as some billionaire, I call him. And that joke was chatting her up and trying to take her off to dinner. But yes, that’s when I fell mad in love with Lewanne. She’s always been so supportive of my work and she’s so intelligent and such a she comes into my studio every day and I she, her taste is impeccable. She can go, you know, those two colours are not quite working with that other colour there and whatever. And she’s right and she knows herself. She really does. She.

Pearl Lam (林明珠):You 2 are very compatible.

Damian Elwes: They’re very.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Good. Yeah, because you 2 actually support each other.

Damian Elwes: That’s right. I mean, I think you are career.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): On your and after you met her is actually built together.

Damian Elwes: Totally.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): OK, so, so, so your story is, I mean, your story is really very special. You really have the courage to actually go to a foreign place. You never live in LA before. And you know how to get people to come to you, which is pretty amazing because to have them to visit for your show, which is a big deal already, and then to have it so successful you. So you actually, come on Damien, you never suffered.

Damian Elwes: No, but you know, even no, we, we. So I was going to say Lewanne and I call it feast or famine. So, you know, we have a show and it’s a feast and it goes on and on. And then there’s there’s always the money runs.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Out.

Damian Elwes: Of money runs Exactly. Exactly, Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You know you’re young.

Damian Elwes: Yeah, exactly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): You have to be, you know, exactly. And then tell me you’re live in Colombia and you have your children there as well.

Damian Elwes: Well, first of all, we moved there because there had been an earthquake here, there had been the riots here, There was an.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Earthquake, you know.

Damian Elwes: An Earth yes. And, and, and the house that I was renting from Malcolm McLaren, who the guy who’d studied all those Sex Pistols and punk rock and everything had the beam was completely cracked, cracked. And I said I called him and he was in Paris and I said Malcolm, I’m sorry, but the beam is cracked. He was like, no, it’s always been that way. And I said no, let me show you the chimney. It’s also cracked. Anyway, it was time to leave. And I said to Lewanne, you know, I bought this piece of property in the rainforest for virtually nothing. Why didn’t buy?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Why did you buy well a property in a rainforest?

Damian Elwes: Well, I loved the rainforest and I loved I. I had been backpacking when I was 18 years old across South America before I went to college and fell in love with South America. And I, when I went back there to visit, well, that’s another whole story. But an art dealer from New York sent me to live in his house in his palace in Cartagena. And while I was there, I visited this very, very the rainforest, very remote place in southern Colombia and fell in love again with that place. And somebody persuaded me to buy a piece of land. It was so inexpensive at that point. And so I bought 20 acres there and started building a house. And so when I was with Lewannen in Los Angeles and the and the beam was cracked and the house was unlivable. And so I took brought her to Colombia. I went down there two weeks before her and cleaned up because nobody had ever lived in the house. And so there was just masses of insects and taken over. And so I cleaned it all up and got it all ready and she came down. She fell in love with it immediately because it’s in those days were virtually no cars. It was all just horses. It was like the Wild West. And so you tied up on a hitching post outside your house or outside any of the shops in the little town. And she is a rider, so she loved riding every day. She fell mad in love with it and she came back and we lived there for six years. Six years, yes. And I started to make these huge paintings and when we were there, huge installations, joining all the paintings together, that’s when it first started to become a little bit conceptual. And my I would recommend to any artist, young artist who is struggling or starting out or to, to go to a country where they can afford to because it was so inexpensive. We could live down there like kings on about $15,000 a year and we did. And, and then we once a year we would go and do an exhibition in London or Los Angeles or New York and make far more than $15,000. So we were living really, really well. We were billionaires down there. Wow in pesos so.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And obviously you guys are fluent in Spanish.

Damian Elwes: We’re we’re fluent in Spanish.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Absolutely. So even before you arrived.

Damian Elwes: No, we, we learnt it when we were down there. But I have to say that it’s so remote quote that the Indigenous people who live there, they only have a vocabulary of about 250 words. So it’s very easy. It’s very easy to learn and.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And and you get along with them.

Damian Elwes: And we get along really well and Lewannen is so great with all the people and helping people with their children who are sick or I’ll she’ll give them medicine and nutrition or advice and that kind of thing. And she she became very popular.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So you, your both children. They were they they were born there, or they grew.

Damian Elwes: Up there, the first child grew up the first three-year, her first three years there and our second child, Lewanne, was pregnant with him. When in 2000 we had to leave. It became, it became a little bit dangerous really. Yeah. I got taken off by the FARC to meet the head of the FARC in the middle of the rainforest.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): What? How come?

Damian Elwes: I got a letter one day just saying we know who you are, we know you’re a good person. I had stumbled on, I think I was painting different rainforests and I had a couple of times I had been painting one time in the rainforest and I suddenly noticed that all of the roots of the trees were full of leaves and there were no other leaves. Somebody had gathered them and put them in between the roots. And so I asked the indigenous person who is my guide, and he said, oh, it’s the FARC. And I said, ah, is the FARC looking at us right now? And he was like, yes. I said, OK, you know what? The painting’s finished, let’s roll it up, let’s go. And this happened again. I went into another for cloud forest. I painted a huge painting on top of a volcano on a cloud forest up there. And again, there were FARC people in near there and I that’s why I think I got the letter. And but anyway, to cut a Long story short, I told Lewanne, who of course was very fearful with a little baby and nobody to talk to. I told her, don’t worry, you know me, I will either escape. If I can’t escape, I will. When I meet the leader of the FARC, I will make best friends with him and you’ll let me go. And I tried the escape thing and I didn’t really try the escape thing, but I did quickly have a gun to my head at one point. So I thought I was being kidnapped for a very long time. But actually when I met the leader, I did exactly as planned. And I made best friends with him just by opening up a very intellectual conversation with him about communism and life and what was going to happen in Colombia, you know, when he took over and all of this. And by the end of it, he was hugging me and saying, you really understand me and I’d like to come visit you. I have friends who I visit every couple of weeks. And you’re a great guy, and I’m going to make sure nobody harms you at all and everything. And I said, thank you very much, that’s great. And shook hands. And then when I got home to Lewannen, I said it’s time to leave. It is time to leave. This guy’s going to visit us every few weeks and you know, it’s going to be more dangerous for us. So we we left and and came to the Los Angeles and had our second child here and continued.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): When you arrive back here, I mean your contact basically is 6 years old, I mean six years ago. So you have to rework.

Damian Elwes: Again, yes, yes. But as I said, you know, I the paint, I sold so many paintings to so many important people here in Los Angeles that it was just constantly, constantly there were more and more people who saw them in those houses and wanted them.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): When did you start the Studio series?

Damian Elwes: I started the studio series, so I had been painting, you know, drawing studios back in Paris years ago. When I came back to Los Angeles, I didn’t know what to paint. And we were living in a little apartment. Lu Ann was having the second child, our boy Aubrey, and we had Cosmo already, who was three years old. And so we had a little apartment on the promenade near the promenade on 3rd St in Santa Monica, and the living room had to double as a studio. If we had a client over, we had to pretend the whole place was a studio, clean it all out, make it all white and, you know, and it worked somehow. But I began, Pierce Brosnan’s wife called me. They already had several paint. Pierce loved my paintings and he had several paintings. She called me and said, listen, I, I Pierce, you know, it’s just got this James Bond film. It’s his birthday coming up. I would love to get him another one of your paintings. What are you doing right now? And I said, well, I just made this painting of an artist’s studio. So I think I’m, I’m really interested in, in resuming painting artist studios. And she said, OK, well, is there anything from, you know, the South Seas because I’m from Hawaii. I said, well, I can do Gogan Studio for you. And so that was the first painting that I made was of Gogan Studio. And she, she, I made a couple for her to choose from. She took them both. And shortly after that, Annette Bening got a Monet studio. So I was off and running. But how did that happen? Was that I bought a computer when we first arrived back because we didn’t have computers. We didn’t. The Internet had only just been invented and, and the first thing that I googled was Picasso’s Bato Lavoir Studio. Because when I went to Paris, when I had gone to Paris years before, the 1st place I went the first day was Picasso’s Bato Lavoir Studio in Montmartre. Only to find out that yes, there’s lots of tourists, but there’s nothing to see really because that place was burned down in the 70s and they built a new building. And so I then googled. My first thing I ever googled was Picasso’s Battle of West Studio. And 9 little photo fragments of photographs came up, and even a little map showing that Picasso was living next door to Modigliani. And all of it was so exciting. And so I began to try and put it together what his studio looked like, could I do make it? And I couldn’t understand it. And then after a while of drawing from the little photographs, and they were some of them were just fragments of photographs, I suddenly noticed the hand of a Demoiselle in one side of one photograph. And then I looked at all the other photographs and there was the arm of the opposite Demoiselle in another photograph. So I printed out Demoiselle d’avignon and suddenly I could make a jigsaw puzzle of all the photographs and see what his studio looked like, probably for the first time since he worked there in 1907, you know? So it was incredible and you know that the realisation.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Like a detective.

Damian Elwes: Like a detective, I could not realise not only could I paint Picasso’s Bato Lavoir Studio right then, but I could do that with any artists, any of my favourite artists at any time that I wanted to be a family on the wall and see into their studio.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So how did you do the Gogan Studio?

Damian Elwes: That’s the most the the further back in time you go is the most challenging. And so yeah, that’s the 19th century. There’s one photograph of from within one of his studios now he had about 6 different studios in DED. There was one photograph of the inside. There was the existing photograph, actual, his last studio is existing there. And then there’s all his paintings and his drawings and all of that. So I put all of that together. I even went to all of the different Sotheby’s catalogues to find everything that people, when he died, sailors looted his studios and took all of the. Now all of those things have cropped up late, years later, and they appear in Sotheby’s and Christie’s catalogues. And so all of his possessions I got and all of that, I managed to put it together. But of course, I had to use a lot of my imagination as well. Yeah. And to put it together.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): And then with your creative of mine, you put things together. And also when you do a studio, you study about the artist. Yes, absolutely. Study how and of course you study each of the series and and how they paint and go gun, how and how and how you looked at these native women. I mean all there must be.

Damian Elwes: Everything. Every. Every interview they ever had, every film that was ever made about them, every book that was written about them, every person who wrote an account of visiting that studio that’s so useful, you know?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So each of these painting must have taken you a lot of time because I can see that beside you, you really paint the details is that research effort of of studying the artist. Not just studying the artists of how they paint, but the live experience.

Damian Elwes: Absolutely.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Studio activities.

Damian Elwes: Absolutely. Yeah. I’m very much looking at the studio activities. And of course, as you said, the imagination of course has to come into it, particularly if you go back far. But even with every studio, because you know, you see a, let’s say, Lucy and Freud’s studio and you see his palette on a table with lots and lots of paints. But then you see also he has two chairs by his painting, and one chair is covered in paints. Of course, the palette was there sometimes. So you can move things around. Because in this real studio, everything’s moving all over the place all the time.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Has to be, yeah.

Damian Elwes: Yeah. And you figure out as an artist, where would that be? Where would.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): That every studio I love the most is the floor.

Damian Elwes: Yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because the paint that that that’s built on the floor, that’s the most beautiful.

Damian Elwes: Me too. Me too. I love that. I learned that. And, and Lucian Freud would, after he finished with the palette, he would take his palette knife and there’s a little film of him doing this and take, pick the paint off and then splatter it against one particular wall. So that wall is covered in paint of it’s Plavo. Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So who’s your favourite artist studio so far?

Damian Elwes: Yes, that’s so hard because I like.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I know, I know. You’re down your your your three wars Picasso painting. Yes, that was amazing.

Damian Elwes: That that was Picasso’s villa in Cannes in 1956. And it’s, there’s literally hundreds and hundreds of artworks in that studio that he’s completed or he’s working on. It’s April 1956. I’m trying to get you to imagine that you’re arriving at the front door of his and coming into his villa. And it’s the three grand floor rooms that he was using as studios. And you see them and you can literally walk around inside them and examine all of these things. And, and what was so exciting about that one for me was that in the actual painting studio, I was just painting the painting studio and all of these beautiful objects. And I realised at some point during it that I was painting his studio in 1956. But he was fully focused on Velasquez studio in Las Meninas in 1656 300 years before that. And probably no coincidence that it was 300 years and he was actually placing everything in the studio to represent different bits of Velasquez painting. The the Princess was this painting that he did. The the Chamberlain in the doorway was a painting of the shadow that he put particularly in the studio. He thought his studio resembled that studio in Las Meninas that Velasquez was painting in. And so he was focused on that. And then I went back to the Las Meninas painting and saw that Velasquez at that time, on the walls of the studio were two big paintings of the ancient arts. So Velasquez was painting on the ancient arts. Picasso was focusing on him. I was focusing on Picasso. And that’s what my paintings are about. They’re about how ideas go from one artist to another and inspire, you know, different generation to different generation. And so that nobody knows that nobody knows it is nobody knows that Picasso was doing that because.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): It is you actually show a different historical perspective because I think if you study a history of an artist or their biography, they will talk about their biography instead of so, so specific. That’s right that you are, you’re actually went to the studio. You look at the studio and then you realise that he was actually inspired by another artist and and I think this is, these are the valuable, this is, this is really.

Damian Elwes: It’s a visual history. Yeah, I’m telling a visual history. And, and it’s always surprising to me the things that I learn. And I think that as an artist, I’m seeing things that are obviously a writer would not see.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah. And I remember when we were talking about the Basquiat studio, you were, you did different Basquiat studio, but in different angles.

Damian Elwes: Yes, that’s.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Right, but when you see from different angles how in your mind you must have already painted.

Damian Elwes: Well.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): The whole studio in the 3D form.

Damian Elwes: So just going back to Picasso for a second. So for that gigantic painting with all of that thing, I had to assemble all of the photographs that could possibly be fan. And luckily Picasso had two or three favourite photographers, friends who are photographers. One of them was called David Douglas Duncan and he’s put out six or seven books on Picasso. And so I took all, photocopied everything and, and put all of his photographs all over the walls and all of the other photos. And there was a documentary team that made a movie, a documentary of me making the painting in the early stages. And they called me and said, listen, we can’t put it on TV because you’ve got all these photographs by David Douglas Duncan and you have to get his permission if we are allowed to release the documentary. So I called David Douglas Duncan and he was in his 90s. I think he was like 96, not sure exactly, but he was. And he, I said to him, you know, I explained to him the situation and he said no, no way. And I said, but David, you know, The thing is this I, you know, I am, I could not have done this painting without you. You are the link. And that’s what all my paintings are about, are about how one artist inspires the next and the next artist inspires the next and next. And so without you, I could not possibly have done this. And he said, oh, all right, you can do it. But coming back to Basquiat, somebody had seen a portrait that I did of, of Basquiat and they contacted me and said I was the Basquiats assistant at that time when he was living on Crosby St and I made all the frames for him. A man called Stephen Torton. And I said, and he said, could I come and make a frame for your portrait of Basquiat? And I said, of course, please do come Stephen. And so he came all the way from New York and he helped me make a frame for the Basquiat painting. And so I got to ask him questions and of course I asked him, so where on Crosby St was it? And you know, it says it’s on the top floor. And he said, no, no, it’s on the second floor. Gave me the address. And I went there to see a lot of different studios in New York. But I went that one first. And I just rang the bell and the woman answered. And I said, excuse me, my name is Damien Elwiz. I’m a painter and you’re living in Basquiat’s studio. And before I could finish, she said no, I’m not in Basquiat’s studio is on the top floor. And I said no, that’s what they’re advertising in Airbnb. But actually you’re living in Basquiat’s studio. And she said, well, what can I do for you? And I said, well, you can look me up on the Internet and make sure that I’m legitimate. And I’ve painted and I’ve done a drawing of Basquiat’s studio already. And she said, no, no, no, no. What would you like to come and see it? And I was like, I would love to come and upstairs and take a couple of photographs. So she let me come upstairs. Amazing thing was that her little daughter, who’s only three years old, was painting in the exact spot where Basquiat did his major paintings, because that was where the best light coming was coming through the window right there. And, and so then when I went back home and we had the lockdown, I was wondering, OK, how am I going to gather all the information? And this woman called Patti Astor, who was one of an art dealer who showed Basquiat and Keith Haring back in the early 80s, had contacted me and said, I love your paintings, you know, and I said, well, can you answer a few questions about, you know, you’ve obviously went to the Crosby St loft. And so she did. She gave me, you know, she answered some questions and she said not only that, if you come onto my Facebook page, you’ll find all the people who, you know, went to his loft back in that time. And so I did that during lockdown. There was nothing else going on. And I got there gradually, their telephone numbers and called them all and asked them what were the videos, What was on TV when you were in there, What music was playing? What albums did you see lying around? What books did you see lying around? What art was he collecting? What everything just. And so I was able to just completely fill these gigantic paintings of the studio with everything that they told me.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Do you work like this on every single artist or and or there’s several of those that you are favourite and then you will.

Damian Elwes: Well, you know, I can can I really relate to, to, to, to, I do work like that on every single artist as much as I can. But I really relate to Herring and Basket because they were exact same age as me. I got to meet them, so I got to talk to them about making art and, and we lived in the same era and so we grew up on the same comic books and the same cartoons, you know, and so many of those things in there, both of their studios, the art materials and were things that I was using at exactly that time as well. So they’re the ones that I relate to even more strongly than, well, as much as the others, yes.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): So after, So what is what is in your mind now? What is your? How are you? I feel that Damien, you never really planned something. It’s just that things comes through you and it’s all organic.

Damian Elwes: Well, I’m constantly reading and researching and listening to all the time that I’m painting. I have YouTube on and I’m listening to Peter Doug talking or whichever artist I’m interested in at that moment. And so I’m constantly researching the next studios that are coming up and I always have a list of that are of paintings that are fully researched. I may have done a little drawing or a gouache, but I haven’t done a painting yet. And so my mind is full of, I’m always thinking about all of those paintings that are coming up and how I’m going to do them. So right now I have in my mind Miro’s sculpture studio in in Majorca, I have Picasso’s sculpture studio in Mujan. Those two are both incredible studios that I haven’t.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Have you been? Have you visited Modigliani?

Damian Elwes: So he had a yes. I really want to paint Modigliani’s studio. I love his work and I, he had a little studio in Paris. I’ve been there and there’s very little information. There’s not, we know the windows. I can’t see what the windows are, but there’s just enough to make a painting. Yes, and I will. So I will do that, absolutely.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): OK, so you’ve been doing studios and studios, yes. I mean, besides painting, what do you do? What’s your hobby?

Damian Elwes: Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): My my.

Damian Elwes: Family, yeah, my family with my children and my wife, that’s about all the time I have and people think that I’m so social because I was very social growing up in England and I’m. And they see me at my exhibitions and it’s full of all of these people. And so they think that I I’m constantly out with all of these people that it’s not like.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): But you cannot, because you can see from your painting the details. Yeah, I mean.

Damian Elwes: Yeah, I wish I could make more painting meetings per year. That’s my own year. I see my other artist friends putting out a painting every other day and I wish I was in that, you know, You know, I wish I could do that, but that’s not the way this works. There is a lot of research to it and I and I enjoy that. But I do look forward to moments of like I and that haven’t happened in the last few years of just kind of going on holiday to Italy and just painting a painting every day of different thing. You know, I would like to do that. I would really like to paint Venice, Italy very much.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Last question to ask you is would you allow other artists to paint your studio?

Damian Elwes: Well, I have been sent by fans paintings that they’ve done of my studio. Oh, how?

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Wonderful, Anne. Yes, Anne.

Damian Elwes: I prefer painting my own studio. That’s why, you know, so people always ask when are you going to paint your own? Of course, I have painted my own studio. I just haven’t put them out there as much. But that’s why I was so happy to send you that one for Hong Kong, because that’s such a personal painting and it has Lewanne with the baby We.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Put it right in the front.

Damian Elwes: Yeah, and there’s there’s, you know, it has all the paint, a lot of the paintings that I was doing at that time of my first baby, my first child, Lewanne with the baby and all of that. It’s all in there. And so it tells the.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Story I saw Lewanne pregnant as well.

Damian Elwes: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you, thank you. What a wonderful hour.

Damian Elwes: That’s right. Oh goodness, I can’t remember. It went so quickly.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah. Thank you.

Damian Elwes: Very welcome. And listen, I didn’t get to ask you questions. I did. There are a few things I wanted to ask you. Yes, we’re like, well, so who? Who are your favourite artists? Western artists, let’s say, and or also female artists? I’d like to.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): Know I love Pollock. I love Jackson Pollock.

Damian Elwes: Great. He’s coming up for your show. Yeah.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): I love Jackson Pollock and I also female artists I like. I love John Mitchell.

Damian Elwes: I love John Mitchell. OK, great idea.

Pearl Lam (林明珠): These are the two I really love. Me too. And of course I do. I do like Modigliani and I love Basquiat. Yeah. Thank you.