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 Biography
Damon Tommolino is thirty four years old
and currently resides on
Long Island, NY.
Artist Statement
As far as the "body" of my work goes, I would break
the majority of it down into categories:
1. Social / Political / Evolution (commentary)
2. Man and Woman / Adam and Eve (creationism vs. evolution)
3. Moche (interpretations of the Peruvian artifacts).
4.Subsequent (most recent works....description to come.....see
gallery for preview)
The common link between the thoughts behind my work is that I
am extremely interested in the ongoing argument between Creationism
vs. Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design vs. The Ancient Mystery
vs. Who we really are today.
The point of my paintings is to provoke as much thought as possible.
I try hard not to overly point a viewer in any one specific direction.
I don't believe this is my job as an artist. I would much rather
present several ideas or options or paths for any viewer to take
throughout any given piece. Therefore, I purposely leave a certain
amount of ambiguity in the work. At its best, viewers will be
able to make connections between the characters I paint and their
own lives.
I strive to bring awareness to the way in which we live. My paintings
reflect our society, our nation, and our most intimate relationships.
Is there room for improvement or growth in our lives?
As far as the rendering goes, my goal is to keep one idea in
my head while painting a piece and to try to be as consistent
as possible with the energy of the brushstrokes throughout that
piece. Hence, I rarely switch brushes during a piece and I almost
always finish a piece in one sitting even if it takes 16 hours.
I am never happy with the outcome of a piece when I revisit an
idea at another time because I see too many conflicting thoughts
or inconsistencies in energy or attitude.
Finally, the Man and Woman series started as a series of self
portraits with various looking women. Some of these pieces are
physiognomic or psychological studies of my wife. I usually depict
the Man as "early man" or a far more primitive creature
than the Woman. This concept is also depicted in the Adam and
Eve series of works where there is something very "cavelike" to
the first human beings created by God. I just do this because
I think it's funny. The underlying theme to these paintings is
that we never, (no matter how long we are with the person,) fully
understand our significant other. As for the people in this series,
I often paint their facial expressions to be either bewildered,
cynical, confused, or helpless with emotion.
In all, one of the major problems in the world today is that
you have groups of people who truly believe that they are more
evolved than other groups of people. The people who think they
are more evolved usually judge, stereotype or conquer the latter.
This is a contradiction that I love to address in some of my
work and especially in the anti-war pieces that I create. If
my work can guide viewers to analytically look at themselves
and how they coexist with a society, I have accomplished what
I set out to do.
Education
Queens College, Flushing, New York
M.S. in Secondary Art Education, 2000
St. John’s University, Jamaica, New York
B.S. In Education, 1996
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