There is so much of Nature in and about the paintings of Awang Damit Ahmad. The sea, the sky, the mountains, the padi fields, the wind… His works centre around the lot of impoverished fishermen and farmers in his birthplace Kuala Penyu, Sabah. Iraga (North-Easterly) refers to the wind blowing from mainland China to Sabah, raising the hot temperature, while the series of works are done between 2003 to 2011. “Iraga is during the monsoon season, where the fish catch is very little, sometimes even zilch. The fishermen could not use their implement such as bubu (fish trap),” says Awang Damit. Living from hand to mouth, the fishermen have to desperately look for other sources of income to put food on the table. This work is part of a series under the Perjalanan Utara over a three-year period from 2007 to 2009. The Iraga series comes after the Alun-Alun Ke Marista series and precedes Payarama, about the rainy season. After studying at the Mara Institute of Technology, Awang Damit followed up with his Masters at the Catholic University, Washington, USA, in 1990. He won the Minor Award in the Young Contemporary Artists competition in 1984. In 1988, he was selected among the Malaysian art icons for the Contemporary Paintings Of Malaysia exhibition at the Asia-Pacific Museum in Pasadena, Los Angeles. He won the Major Award (Painting) with his work, Nyanyian Petani Gunung, in the Salon Malaysia 1991-92, and also clinched the Consolation Prize in the same category. He also won the Gold Awards in the Ecorea Jeonbuk Biennale and the Olympic Fine Art in London (both in 2012). He has been a fulltime artist since he retired from teaching in May 2011. He was awarded the McMillan Woods Global Awards in March 2017, and given a Tribute Showcase in Art Expo Malaysia Plus (2017) by the organiser.