Damon DeWitt

Background & Training

I am an artist, teacher, and father from Orlando, Florida. I found art during my final year of college and fell in love with it sometime during my first year in the real world. I have been making art for about fifteen years now, which still feels strange to say. I suppose I am still trying to figure out what happened.

I earned my fine arts degree from Florida State University and have lived in Europe, Asia, New York City, and five cities across Florida. I have worked in entertainment, hospitality, museums, and education. I am married with two children, and teaching art has become an important part of how I think about making it. Teaching keeps me curious. Having children makes the future harder to ignore.

My work has been exhibited and sold throughout the United States and internationally. I have created commissioned work for private and corporate clients, and my work is displayed in public spaces across the country. I am grateful for all of that, but the resume is not really the interesting part.

The interesting part is that I still want to make things.

I have never been particularly good at choosing one lane. My curiosity tends to get there first and figure out the rules later. I work across painting, sculpture, mixed media, and whatever else seems appropriate for the idea. Sometimes I know what I am making before I make it. Sometimes the material has a better idea.

I am interested in the places where the personal and the political bump into each other. I am interested in America, its contradictions, its history, its beauty, its violence, and the strange stories we tell ourselves about who we are. I am also interested in the natural world and our increasingly complicated relationship with it.

Most of all, I am interested in staying curious.

I do not want to spend my life making the same thing because I figured out how to make it well. There are too many things to see, too many questions to ask, and too many ideas making noise in my head.

So I make the work and see where it takes me.

Artist statement

The ideas determine the medium.

I move between materials, techniques, styles, and forms because I do not believe an idea should be forced into a particular shape just because that shape has worked before. A painting can be a painting. Another idea may need sculpture, collage, found objects, or something I have not thought of yet.

Exploration is important to me. It is important in life and it is important in the studio. My practice is allowed to wander. I would rather follow a strange idea somewhere interesting than make the same thing again because I know how it ends.

I feel more pressure to provoke than to produce. I want to make powerful work, not repetitive work. I am suspicious of the factory mentality that can creep into art, where the goal becomes making a recognizable product again and again for the approval of the choir.

If I could produce the same thing forever to the sound of critical applause, I would probably walk away from the factory.

My roles as an artist, teacher, and father keep me moving. Teaching keeps me curious. Fatherhood makes the future harder to ignore. Being American means living inside a culture full of contradictions and trying to make sense of them. All of that enters the work.

I do not expect every piece to have one answer. I am more interested in making something that opens a door or builds a bridge. The viewer can decide whether to walk through it.

Ultimately, I want the work to remain curious. I want it to surprise me. I want it to make room for beauty and discomfort, seriousness and humor, the personal and the political.

I am not interested in making one kind of art forever.

I am interested in seeing what happens next.

Press & Recognition

My work has been recognized in editorial coverage, gallery exhibitions, and cultural conversations about contemporary art. My paintings have appeared in group and solo exhibitions, earning placement in both public institutions and significant private holdings.

Work With Damon

Commission me. Feed me. DeWitt works with private clients, institutions, and organizations on bespoke commissions tailored to scale, subject, and intent.

Inquire About a Commission