Acrylic on wood (12.75” x 20.5” x 1.75")

Damian Gomes is a self-taught abstract figurative painter and sculptor working primarily in oil, acrylic, wood and clay.

With references to surrealism, Gomes' wildly gestural neo-expressionist forms explore themes of life and death, socio-cultural phenomena, and other existential questions.

Frequently macabre, sensual, and darkly comic human images figure prominently into Gomes' work.

The journey from the sublime to the absurd is populated by religious and profane characters, and rendered in an introspective, self-effacing style. He explains about his artmaking process “You could call it spirituality, I don’t know, but I get in touch with this different place. People can reach a space, though some people aren’t looking for it, if you meditate or do psychedelic drugs, and you’re open to it. You can access these great things. That’s when my best work happens. I’m not thinking so much. I just go with the paint, almost not conscious of anything. And then as I’m working, or even standing in front of a blank canvas, an image will just emerge and tell me what to do.”

"What the completed painting says is sometimes the answer to a question I hadn't yet asked. " 

Gomes lives and works in the local ghost town Jerome close to Sedona.