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It can be an ill wind that blows no good with the Northerly Winds (Iraga) sweeping China towards Sabah. This must have been one of the more colourful Essence of Culture (EOC, or Intipati Budaya) series, and light, with a distinctly triangular core and bifurcating protrusions. Blue, red with dried green and a grey backdrop in the right half, the bottom left half whitish. If you don’t know the artist Awang Damit Ahmad’s oeuvre better, you would say, it’s happy. Which it is. Of course, happiness is relative, couched with all the unknown sometimes dark sentiments that could have clouded it earlier. But if you were sadomachistically looking for the tinge of sadness in the work, you won’t be disappointed. Therein lies the rub.The EOC is the works that launches Awang Damit’s career, yet it took some time and a few more series for the public to latch on to it. It represents the artist’s world-view about Man and Nature and life, about the need to strike a balance between the survival and sustenance, between beliefs and obstacles. This was about the struggles of the farmers and the fishermen in the Kuala Penyu community in poverty-stricken part of Sabah which he grew up in. The EOC series lies between 1985-1995 (some said 1996). A relatively late starter in art, at the age of 27, Awang Damit studied for his BFA at the Universiti ITM, winning the Best Student Award in 1983. He was selected for the major Contemporary Paintings of Malaysia exhibition at the Asia-Pacific Museum in Pasadena, Los Angeles, in 1988, with all the Who’s Who in Malaysian Art. In 1988, he won the 2nd Prize in the Malaysian Bank Association art competition. He obtained his Master’s in Fine Art at the Catholic University in Washington DC, United States, 1989-1990. He won Malaysia’s biggest art prize, the 1st Prize in the Salon Malaysia III organised by the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, for his work, Nyanyian Petani Gunung (now in Petronas Collection). REFERENCEAwang Damit Ahmad 1985-2015: bioRETRO (Pantau IRAGA, 2015)