작품 상세

Awang Damit Ahmad left for the United States in 1989, bringing back a Masters degree in Fine Art from the Catholic University in Washington DC. This was from one of his gems chronicling the challenge of weather on land and in the sea, eking a living in his Kuala Penyu hometown in Sabah. Studded with incipient flushes of his personal iconography, it is a bitter-sweet reminder of adapting to Nature and its vagaries to achieve a yield for sustenance and commerce. Games children play and playthings were all sourced from the rustic environs, and there were not even the Tamagotchi contraptions sold in the big cities. Maybe, simple catapults, traps (bubus) and cages, handle fish-nets and musical instruments made from leaves. The Essence Of Culture EOC series became his most iconic series, well sought after by collectors.. Awang Damit Ahmad was a late-starter in art, quitting his job as a Telekom Malaysia technician at the age of 27, to take up Fine Art at the Mara Institute of Technology (later a university) and topping the class in 1983. In 1988, he won 2nd Prize in a competition organised by the banks, and that year, his work was chosen for the Contemporary Malaysian art exhibition at the Asia-Pacific Museum in Pasadena, Los Angeles. Awang was in the entourage for the exhibition opening and visiting many art museums while sketching copiously. In 1991, Awang won the Major Prize in Salon Malaysia III, with his work, Nyanyian Petani Gunung (now in Petronas Collection). He taught at the Universiti ITM and retired as Associate Professor in May 2011.