The Bite Magazine - Spring 2016 - Issue 15

F or someone who has worked freelance in fashion, forecasting and design, it doesn’t come as a surprise that they would end up doing fine art. This is what Dameon Priestly did almost ten years after he graduated from the University of Ulster in 1988 where he attained a BA Honours in Fashion Design and Illustration and was named Irish Design graduate of the year.The artist who was born in Belfast in 1966 was a freelancer in London until the mid-1990s and since 1995 has been working full-time as a fine artist. Some people take to art like a duck does to water but Dameon believes that ‘one is born an artist’. He added, “One can be born able to draw and be encouraged, but being an artist is something else, so for me there was no choice, it’s who I am.” As well as having drawn at an advanced level since before he could write, the artist says art and design has ran through both sides of his family for the past two generations, but he is the first in his family to make it his life and way of living. He then explained to us that there is a difference between making a drawing/ painting and a piece of art.“A piece of art is something that one adds a conscience thought to and which comes from within rather than just something which is exe- cuted because one is able. Consequently, I would say it was when I was four years old, after drawing a bible story in primary school, as requested by my teacher that I got bored because I finished quickly. I then went on to make Jesus a Sherriff and his followers into cowboys. Although I was reprimanded for this, I would regard it as an early if not my first piece of art.” We wanted to know where Dameon got his influences from: “Influence would be from American comic books which I col- lected and read from 1970.Those artists taught: storytelling, technique, perspec- tive, draughtsmanship, typography and anatomy – the lot. Inspiration: Schiele, Klimt, Warhol, Lautrec, Caravaggio and Sickert.” Every artist has some form of message that they aim to bring across in their work. Dameon says his depends on the topic he is investigating at the time but generally, it is to “make people think, consider and contemplate those things they are unaware of, or those things they do not necessarily want to think about: the story behind the image.” An artist who has drawn and has been commis- sioned to draw various topics, Dameon still has some subjects that he would like to explore. “But all on the question of justice and basic human rights,” he stressed. “The next collection is called ‘The Pier & Balling Hook’ which is about the corruption in the dockyards of New York in the 1940s and 1950s: unions, organised crime and law enforcement corruption.” Being an artist does have its rewards and the most rewarding moment for Dameon is “seeing a piece of work going to a buyer or being discussed at an exhibition, because I know my work is done; the piece has provoked a reac- tion (good or bad) and discussion. On the other side of the coin, he says, “an unrewarding moment is when someone refuses to listen, to see what is behind the image. They don’t want to under- stand or comprehend the piece of work. biteartistprofile