I am an artist and designer living and working in London, UK. My work predominantly focusses on the perception of texture; sheets, direction and surface, exploring our feelings towards the very big and the very small.
My drawings are part of a developing exploration of both surface and texture – the simple action of a line responding to the previously drawn line – and the act of drawing in terms of bodily performance. Physically demanding to create, the physiological/mechanical aspects of the execution of the larger drawings, in particular, become integral to the process of building the planes and textures, letting the line both respond to and dictate limitations on muscular control and physical/psychological stamina. As such, time is an ever-present arbiter and obvious partner.
That the three-dimensionality is driven by lines in a relationship to each other – just as the contours on a map allow us to build an image of a landscape in our imaginations – the drawings can be seen to work on both a micro and macro scale evoking the images created, on the one hand, from scanning electron microscopes and, from the other, the surfaces described by geological radar and sonar, or the undulations of a hillside.
These notions of planes or sheets can then subverted; expectation of flow and dimension denied and/or undermined, visual representations of entropy introduced to create both tensions and hints at complexity weaving and burrowing through the surface of the paper.
Damian Jaques studied printmaking at Portsmouth Polytechnic (B.A.) and has an M.A. in printmaking from Wimbledon School of Art. He is also a graphic designer and lecturer in Visual Communication.