Art of Don DeLeva

I painted for money and I didn't like it. Now I paint for myself and I feel like I am actually making a contribution to the creative conciseness of Seattle. Showing my art in cafes brings the work to the masses of people who live everyday life. When you go to galleries you see art that sells, otherwise the gallery would not be in business. My art is not in galleries because it's hard to sell my work. why would anyone try to sell something that is takes convincing the client the work is good? I truly have had people walk up to my art and say "I want this painting" and on the spot write me a check for a couple thousand dollars. My work is not hard to understand if you don't want to understand it. If you feel like you have to know the right answer to my work then you missed the point. title:Skipjack medium: oil on wood date: currently in progress from 2007 to present. size: 30 x 40 (ruffly)

As a way of reinventing yourself you have to break down those things you thought defined you. I thought painting defined me so much that I let the world start to influence my work in order to fit in, in order to make money, in order to be understood. But the cost is too high for me to give up the one thing that makes me feel like I can make an offering to the world, my own creativity no matter how banal, ugly, and ridiculous it is. Money contorts My thinking when it comes to My Art . That being said I have only been painting sporadic late lately. I think it is because I am breaking down the my process of painting and separating it from wanting to make money from it and what it is I am really trying to capture. I know I have said this before but I thought I needed to up date this blog and this is how I feel. I will post work soon as it comes.

Yes i have been painting, this is somthing whipped up today after painting the house. It's called Bankers Shame...at this point. I am not sure it is finished. I

They say reinventing yourself is a good thing, well I agree. In the last 3 years I have felt I have been rehashing my old ideas and thoughts, focusing on Art history and the elements of Art. I decided this year to start something I felt was based in the future and the here and now. Object Oriented Programming is an art form I have not really explored so I have made it my goal to understand and learn OOP to clear out my mind and start new, as it were. This change in scope is a powerful one that has taken me out of my myself and in to the world of the present and future. I compare it to build virtual sculpture that serves a purpose. I see programming as the art it is. My goal is to dive deep in to programming and let it influence my Art. I can't wait to see what comes out. I will post as the painting come. :-)

As I design more and more websites I think more about squares. Last night I had a dream that I was rebuilding my face in CSS3 and HTML5. I remember seeing my hands, my fingers were typing out a Div tag with the Id "eyes". Once that happened I was able to see the browser version of my face and the outlines of all the boxes I had created to form the portrait of my face which was actually me alive.

The painting below. Salmon Eater spawn a new direction. Currently I am working on 5 paintings all of which have this collage of images that fade in to the next. I am excited to see what they look like when I am finished.

I have never liked the obvious, my stint with pop surrealism was an experiment with telling people what to see. I came out of it feeling hollow and like a production artist. Honestly I don't have the personality to tell people I am right and everyone else is wrong, only I know what is wrong for me. I don't mean to be cryptic and strange I just think that touching on the vague is powerful. It gives people the opportunity to own their own thoughts about what they are looking at. It is a personal goal of mine to help people find who they are and that they use my art as vehicle to prove to themselves that there vision of life is as valid as everyone else.

I don't have too much news today being I have been working for the last 10 days straight(except yesterday). I do have 4 paintings I am working on right now hopfully I will have some new work to show you in the next month.

I've been working a lot in the last few weeks. All though that means I can finaly eat it also means I haven't been bloging much. Well I have been painting quite a bit. I would say in the last4 weeks I have started 4 paintings, finished 3 worked into 3 and still have not come to a conclusion on " Salmon eater". I have been toying with the idea of leaving the thin veil of white over the image but people seem to mistake the work for not being finished. Its interesting to me how people do not seem to be intersted in coming up with there own conclusions about paintings. Poeple can be so afriad of "being wrong". I say there are some things that are meant to be made personal and my art is one of those things. So if you need more explaining I can only give you what I was thinking of at the time. If this is written wonky its because I did it from my phone and my phone does not display a cursor in this text box. Forgive. Me

This is the next progression of the Salmon Eater. A new title is starting to arise from it, Gold Lust. You can still see the original composition hasn't changed too much but the integration of the bottom part of the painting is starting to become a part of the work. I don't know if the work is finished, I like the misty quality and the sloppy suggestions of shapes that become foundations for defined images. I need to sit with it for awhile.

  I still haven't gone back to Salmon Eater, but it awaits my return. Like I said I finish the Skull, sorry I finished it in one night, Here is it. Title:Summer Nights Medium: oil on clay board Size: 5"x5" Date: 11.2010 It would be nice to say that you can see some of the original scratching or black but all is painted :-).