New A Life, Still Submission!

Damian Stamer
Little Branch
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Oil on panel
18 by 24 inches

Artist Statement
I remember when the stale summer air would hang low in the fields near our house, hugging my childhood body. I would glance over at Dylan, my twin and eternal Huck Finn sidekick, as we peered through the cracks of an old abandoned barn. What treasures hid behind these weathered doors and lockjaw hinges? My nostalgia for these beaten structures and the red clay they stand upon is a sickness from which I will never be cured. I cannot live in both the past and present, but perhaps my paintings can.

Little Branch continues this temporal investigation by compressing visions from my childhood with objects of today.  An aged and distorted barn is juxtaposed with a fresh apple still life. Pushing and pulling space on a flat plane creates a complex realm that even I can’t fully grasp—a dynamic world where the history of painting smashes against my personal history and the places I know well.

Bio
Damian Stamer was born in Durham, North Carolina in 1982.  He has received numerous awards including a Fulbright grant and a Jacob K. Javits fellowship.  He has studied internationally at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, Hungary and the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, Germany.   Damian received his B.F.A. from Arizona State University (summa cum laude) and is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  His work has been featured in Modern Painters magazine (Apr. 2012), Freight + Volume magazine (vol. 4, 2011), A Thousand Living Painters (2012), and Two Coats of Paint art blog (2011).  He has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad. Damian lives and works in Chapel Hill, NC and Brooklyn, NY.