You can hear an insight into his work for this collection here https://www.dameon.co.uk/throughthecurtaintalks

I was born in 1966, and grew up in Belfast during the ‘Troubles’, a constant backdrop to the unpredictable theatre of life during those years. This autobiographical collection of art works looks at my life, aged 4 years old to 22 years old.

After many years of avoiding telling the ‘Belfast Tale’, my hesitancy was born of the thoughts that it would be judged in some way as exploiting real life stories and tragedies, I have eventually created a series of works based on first and second-hand experiences and memories documented in my childhood diaries.

There are plenty of fabulous photographers, filmmakers, writers, poets, journalists and musicians who have told their story of growing up in the Northern Irish conflict. However, there are precious few artists or painters of note out there who have approached this subject. Certainly in respect to telling their own story, or experiences and feelings from a first person approach. I am not actually sure if it’s been done before on this scale.

Talking to a journalist friend last year, I was door stepped when he said ‘If you’re not going to tell our story – then who is? It’s down to you’.

Drawing on my own memories and events in my life and combining them with extensive research of the ‘Troubles’, I have produced 12 collage pieces looking at specific years; story boarding what happened with elements of his own life. Alongside the collages there are 10 paintings (3ft x 3ft) which distil an event or memory down to its concentrated essence. Within the works I have also included lyrics from a song of that year.

These art works are deeply personal to me; they nonetheless do not alienate the viewer, regardless of their own personal experiences growing up, or indeed their knowledge of Belfast’s complex history. The hook of the song lyric or a childhood naïve comment in the form of a diary account, lulls the unwitting viewer into a place of familiarity and comfort before waking them up sharply with the realisation that all is not well in the picture and the story being told.

I have only painted one self-portrait in the past, ‘London Portraits 2019’ collection, but now I’ve ended up creating 22 of them for this exhibition.

From an early age I knew I was destined to be an artist. Over the past 27 years my work has looked at many social injustices and cultural movements born of societal upheaval, and occasionally creativity from chaos.