Damian McMahon is an Irish Artist specialising in portraits and Irish landscapes.
Slowly but surely my passion to paint and draw has finally returned, at times I have tried to avoid it but it has been tearing away at me for many years now. Read More
Contact Damian McMahon for commissions, viewings or to purchase existing works.
From an early age and as far back as I can remember I have always been interested in art. From colouring in children’s colouring books, to painting in primary and secondary school, it was my way of expressing myself. Once I moved onto further education it became a passion and an obsession with me. My inspiration to pursue my artistic career, to a professional level came from my tutor ( Mary Torley ) Mary encouraged me to explore design, texture, colour, technique but most of all detail and perfection.
Painting had always run through my family, my grandmothers sister worked considerably in pen and ink producing skilled studies of seascapes and landscapes of County Down.
After I achieved my A Level results, I decided to further my studies at Manchester School of Art @ Manchester Metropolitan University (1991 to 1993). From an early period on the course my work was compared to artists such as: Kandinsky, Auerbach, Kossoff and Kokoschka. I had never heard of these artists before, so researching their work was of great interest to me and they all seemed to have been painting from the 1930’s – 1940’s and from the Eastern block. I had from an earlier stage in my painting career been inspired by the French Impressionists, such as Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Lautrec, Van Gogh and Gaugin. So it was a real revelation at art school to have my work compared to The Expressionist Movement..
My paintings were highly praised by my course tutors for, mark making skills and the academical application of paint to the surface of the canvas. I went through many phases of insecurity with my work, striving for perfection with the image (something my tutors told me not to try and achieve).
When I finished my studies in November 1993, I never really picked up a brush to paint again, the passion seemed to have left me and over the next 16 years, I only painted for very short periods of time, mostly commissions for clients or close family and friends.