Through the use of modest materials and repetitive minimal shapes, Dameon Lester’s artwork abstractly focuses on our cause and effect with nature. Raised in rural Southwestern Virginia, his life as an artist has taken him to many parts of the U.S. and abroad—to live, study, research, work, and exhibit.
 

Motivated by his newest body of work, he has most recently traveled to both Alaska and Iceland multiple times in a personal search to view, listen, and document the effects of climate change as they are locally presented to him. These direct experiences that help to inform and create his art are the motivation and inspiration into the study of our own self-awareness and connectivity to the planet.

 

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Artist Statement

Our perceptions of existence are bound by our humanity. These limitations prevent us from comprehending the greater resonance of our actions. My art suggests an uneasy continuum between the known and unknown, as well as the controlled and controlling elements of the world that surrounds us. My sculptures and drawings abstract the glacial ice sheets, fragments, and crevasses encapsulating the increasingly ephemeral quality of nature’s assumed permanence and resilience.

The artworks, at once, seem serene in their simple lines and limited color palette, and yet unnerving because of their off-centered balance and sharp angular edges. This juxtaposition mirrors my anxiety of irreversible climate change and our global passivity. I continue to abstract the original source until there only remains a shard, an inscribed line, a vestige for contemplation of what is never known and what is lost on us all.