Damian’s work serves as a meditation. His paintings convey a serious mood, a reflection on artifacts and found objects that point to history and memory. “It’s often said to be haunting. I didn’t appreciate that at first but I’ve come to realize the truth of it.”

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When painting still life, he often painstakingly recreates his subjects to get the right effect. Beading, carving, aging objects to set them back a hundred years or so, even the backgrounds of his work are often “faked” to lend authenticity to a scene. A love for history, forgotten arts and crafts, scale models and dioramas. He sometimes creates an entire scene to light and paint for reference. He calls this process “honest forgery.” When not in studio he rides out to the desert to paint what he calls “sketchy places,” often in moonlight. His landscape work focuses on abandonment, empty places that remain a bit wild. “I’m haunting it, it’s haunting me, it’s a theme. “

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Two moments were key for me. One of my earliest memories was being scared to enter my great grandfathers darkly lit workshop, the large ram skull looming over the door. It was full of artifacts, family history, hand drawn maps of the town, jars of arrowheads, pieces of six shooters he’d found while hunting in the hills, photos of people going back to the civil war. It was full of mystery. Another defining memory was the old nocturne painting, an abandoned mission in the moonlight, that hung in her living room. I was terrified of that it… so naturally it follows that now I go out and paint in the moonlight in the desert. I’m sure I could pay someone to explain that to me, but I’d rather just go paint."

Damian Kinsella, 2024

SDG

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