Dreaming Of A Shack In The Middle Of The Rainforest

The walls will bear images of Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary, of rock-climbing enthusiast and founder of the Patagonia outdoor wear brand Yvon Chouinard, of surfer Nat Young and of Ernest Hemingway, all cast in Dampney's signature bright colours.

"I don't think people really associate Hemingway with adventure as much as they would others as a novelist. And I'm an avid surfer so I had to get a reference in there somewhere."

Unsurprisingly given the surfing, the outdoors, remote cabins and landscapes will also feature heavily in the exhibition, showing a different conception of the idea of adventure.

"Everything has a black background: they're landscapes with a black sky, so they're really dreams."

"Everything has a black background: they're landscapes with a black sky, so they're really dreams. They're places you want to escape to — that's what I'm trying to get the viewer to connect to, that place in the back of their mind where they would love to just escape their day-to-day at. We all dream of that shack in the middle of the rainforest somewhere…"

The exhibition will be hosted at Frances Keevil Gallery in Double Bay as part of the Spectrum Now festival, and will feature a 2.5x2.5m mural painted by Dampney in front of audiences at the opening on Saturday 5 March. The mural will be auctioned that afternoon, with all proceeds going to the Down Syndrome New South Wales charity.

"I've done a fair bit of mural painting in the past, a few cafes and live events. It's something I love doing. After this show finishes I'll be working on a mural at a really big hotel in Melbourne. Working on a larger scale is really fun and interacting with humans is something that I generally love doing; I'm not an artist that likes to hide in the back corner and paint away and not show or interact with people. I'm definitely an extrovert in that sense, I love it."

Painting for an audience is in stark contrast to Dampney's job as a graphic designer, but the two sides of his work inform one another. "After school I went to TAFE to study graphic design because, uh, well because that can be a career. But throughout that 15 years since I've been wanting more of an artist's career, more of a hands on job rather than using the computer — I always curse the computer — and it's finally coming together now.

"For me, the experience in design has helped with the artwork in terms of composition and colour palette, it's almost like you could compare creating an ad campaign. I sort of look at it in the same eyes, creating a composition that is going to work for the viewer — traditional fine artists world probably hate to hear that but I honestly believe that they can be the same thing, in terms of you catering to a consumer's needs. Without saying I'm creating ads on canvas, I'm creating a layout that's pleasing to the viewer."