Damon Pla

Dagsboro

Established
Visual Arts: Painting

By: Gail Obenreder

“In my paintings, I explore landscapes and surreal compositions to provoke thought and meditation.”

After his many high school art classes, Florida native Damon Pla got a mural-painting job for an interior design painting company in Deerfield Beach, something that cemented his career as an artist. Pla worked there for eight years, but from 1997 to 1999 he also worked during the summer in Delaware painting private and commercial murals. In the fall of 1999, he stayed in the state through October and “fell in love with the changing of seasons,” so in 2001 Pla moved to the First State and has lived here ever since.

In 2004, he and his wife had their first child, an impetus that led him “to produce more paintings than murals so that I could be home.” Due to its fast-drying properties, acrylic on canvas is Pla’s medium of choice, allowing him to capture the “late afternoon light and the subtlety of both cool and warm ambient spaces” that are hallmarks of his intimate, nuanced surreal paintings. He often exaggerates the mood of each work to “isolate the essence of a moment in time” that will connect intimately with the viewer.

Many of Pla’s ideas originate in dreams, and “I always sketch an image after remembering a dream, not usually for the content, but largely for what it felt like.” He especially loves Delaware’s landscape, light and its unique and beautiful wetlands. The first painting that “woke up my inner creativity” was the iconic cubist work Nude Descending a Staircase, painted in 1912 by Marcel Duchamp. He was also captivated by the mystique of Edward Hopper, but it was the work of Salvador Dali “that brought me to surrealism.”

His mesmeric works are filled with detail, and so in spite of his success, “time has always been my biggest challenge.” He has many more sketches and ideas than completed works. His facility allows him to work quickly, but he feels that if he were able to slow down, “I could experiment with a detail that I have not yet visited, but know I am capable of.”

Obsessed with spatial depth and awareness “because of a peculiar angle of the sun,” Pla finds great satisfaction when he can “cast sunlight on any object in my painting.”  And he also takes artistic pleasure in creating relationships between two objects that might not necessarily belong together.

As well as the many murals he’s painted, Pla has regularly exhibited his works since his move to Delaware. He has been singled out for awards in a number of exhibitions, and he continues his mural practice, most recently creating a three-storey mural of Menhaden fisherman on The Beacon Inn in Lewes.

Pla is also a serious musician, playing guitar, percussion, piano, cello, and electronic ambient music for the past 36 years, and he has even written a few short films. And the Dagsboro resident can also frequently be found in his gallery – Damon Pla Fine Arts Studio and Gallery – located in Rehoboth Beach.

For Pla, the Division Fellowship means recognition of the work he has produced “by absorbing what the light and landscape of Delaware have given to me.” He plans to use the award to expand his paint supply, move from a cotton to linen substrate for his paintings, and create a series of sculptures based on some of his surreal paintings. Pla quotes Edward Hopper, one of his early inspirations: “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.”

 

Fellowship Home