Daushvili began painting in 2003 but only committed to it full-time after fleeing Tbilisi for the UK, initially taking portrait commissions via social media. Now, he draws inspiration from friends, family, the light in his Kensington studio, and passersby outside his window. He reduces his compositions to their barest traces, using a somber, economical palette that evokes displacement, otherness, and longing. “My paintings are precisely what they represent,” he says. “They come from my stream of consciousness with no particular origin or special interest, and my practice is about capturing the moment when these mundane subjects become special to me. I see no reason to speak of my personal life or anything beyond what you see in my paintings, so I don’t give interviews. If you find something in them that becomes special to you, we have already spoken.”

His work has appeared in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Society of British Artists, and the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibitions. He was selected for the BP Portrait Award in 2014, 2019, and 2020 at London’s National Portrait Gallery. His paintings, often over-painted and reworked, are reminiscent of mid-20th-century British and American artists like Milton Avery, LS Lowry, or David Hockney, yet retain a distinct, irreverent style. These works focus on overlooked figures and have led to exhibitions in New York, Paris, Milan, London, Malmo, and Basel. The presentation at Patricia Low Contemporary Gstaad is his first solo show in Switzerland.

Parmen Daushvili was born in Georgia in 1970, where he earned an engineering degree and owned a successful metals company before criminal elements—supported by Russian operators after the 2008 invasion—stole his life’s work. Surviving several attempts on his life, he arrived in the UK as a refugee with his infant son and became a recluse, finding salvation in painting. An accidental entry of a painting ascribed to his name compelled him to prove his skill, launching his full-time practice. “I became an accidental artist,” he says, “but it saved me from the slavery of working in that Amazon fulfillment center, where they placed me as an unwanted refugee.”