Damian Showyin

Damian Showyin works primarily in painting and drawing, often creating abstract compositions based on the motif of the grid. His works evoke architectural drawings, urban environments or code, arranged sensitively in blocks of colour.

Showyin was one of seven artists commissioned by UTS to complete a 175sqm wall painting in the UTS Central food court, Bird Life Jungle Disco, the largest artwork in the UTS Art Collection. His painting Big City Motel was included in the 2020 collection exhibition Bird’s-Eye-View, and was acquired for the UTS Art Collection.

Justin Paton, Head Curator of International Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, has written of Showyin’s work;

Showyin is a wonderful builder in colour, constructing his intensely satisfying paintings from softly brushed blocks, stacks and windows. The work’s dense grid logic (which is Showyin’s unmistakable hallmark) compelled Paton to ponder how things in any setting—a city, landscape or community—must accommodate each other to get along.

With acrylic, oil pastel, chalk pastel and posca, mostly on paper, Damian has developed his own personal language; one of patterns and braided shapes. He delights in the teeming and tight harmony of the buildings, fences and gardens he inhabits and is surrounded by.

Damian is also known for figurative illustrations drawn with a looser hand and, when he’s not painting, Showyin works laboriously on the loom, weaving compelling textile wall pieces, sculptures and cushions.