"Visionary" Painting

There’s truth to the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Artist Damon Lamar Reed brings that truth to reality. From hip-hop to public art, he strives to create messages that reach the depth of the human condition. As a young artist, Damon was a national competitor in NAACP's Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics(ACT-SO), a winner of the Congressional Art Competition, and a graduate of the Harvard Career Discovery Program in Architecture. After graduating from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago(SAIC) in 1999, he soon after attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Artist Residency. In 2003, Kerry James Marshall featured Damon’s work in his solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art(MCA), One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics. As an artist and entrepreneur, Reed has now created over 400 public art projects including: works for Super Bowl 46, Showtime(The Chi), Gatorade, the Chicago Blackhawks, Ticketmaster, and Sears to name a few. His work is featured in books such as, Kym Pinders’, Painting the Gospel: Public Art and Religion in Chicago. Revolt tv news named Damon “Revolutionary of the week” citing the impact of his Still Searching project, where he uses art to raise awareness about missing women. He is filming a documentary with the same name, backed by Hulu, Kartemquin and Still I Rise Films and was featured in a TedXTalk with the filmmaker Latoya Flowers-Rudd. The BBC also did a feature on the impact of Damon’s art; not to mention stories on News Nation, ABC, CBS, WGN and NBC where he was named as Chicago Today’s first “Hero.”