I wanted to finally feel better about understanding. I painted my wife because I wanted to understand her. I can talk to her, but I didn't understand why I was so compelled.
Damian LoebEvery single painting is different. I'm always trying to figure out what I'm interested in. Usually when I go through and I make the collages or the images for ideas that I want to paint, it's like an Ouija board. Each painting I do is trying to understand what the hell I'm looking at, or want to look at.
Damian LoebI've always wished that I had a great ability to verbalize art theory and find a way that I fit in to the whole lineage, but I don't have a clue.
Damian LoebNow that I'm a father of three kids, suddenly the whole world seems different. I don't want to take anything for granted. If you gaze on something and you appreciate it, you become a part of that circle. That seemed to me to be the only relevance I could understand. The space, the time and the vastness of it all was overwhelming. I needed to understand it or I just was lost.
Damian LoebBeauty has became a pejorative word in art. It was not something one should aspire to, because it was pedestrian. Beautiful things became cheap and easy. If it's cheap and easy, then upper classes aren't going to aspire to it. So, they have to find something more esoteric. I wanted the paintings to be realistic enough that you would have the ability to forget that I'm showing them to you.
Damian Loeb