Art of Don DeLeva

Lately I have been reading about the Art Market and how it is changing the definition of Art itself. Here is a good article on what I am talking about. http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-02-06/art/uptown-money-kills-downtown-art/full/ It's an interesting read.

This year I decided to create 6 to 12 of the best works I am capable of, I have one work completed already it took about 4 months and 6 different versions to create. Monarch, Acrylic on panel, 16x20, 1.2013 Last year I decided to switch from oil to acrylic mainly because I wanted to get back into drawing and printing. That's a logical reason isn't it? After 16 years of oil painting I kept coming up with the same answers to the same problems. I needed new answers to take my work in a new direction so I decided acrylics was the best way to keep painting.  (Hold on the printing and drawing are coming) I also really missed drawing and printing and as I painted in acrylics I started to realize that you can draw on the dry paint, not only, that but I started wiping out areas of paint with my hands like I would wipe an etching plate. You can do that in oil but it makes a hell of a mess. In acrylic all it does is dry on you hand, and as it drys on the work you ca

As I go deeper in to this new phase of painting I start to realize that I am painting White Collar workers as Heroes and Villains, the major players in the game of a country's economic health. At this point I feel that I am working with the mythology of the white collar worker not to an end but recognizing their role in power from a world stand point. the Interview: acrylic on clayboard, 5x7, 10.24.12 Suit 7: acrylic on clayboard, 5x7, 10.26.12

I believe these portraits are celebrations of the technological worker, the Tecky. I wasn't sure for a long time why these portraits were coming out of me. At first I thought it had something to so with the 99% demonstrations, the bank debacles and the corporate corruption. Maybe this has something to do with it but it seems so negative and I wasn't doing research to find out more about these problems, so I knew this really wasn't what I was painting. It just didn't seem correct, the images were too comical for such a heavy topic. Today I was writing an artist statement about my work and it occurred to me after seeing my Dia De Los Muertos portraits of 2 years ago that what I am painting are Techys. Thus the cubism and angular lines with the business suits. These are portraits of people who write code all day and invent the coolist new apps on your phone. They are celebrations of the people in technology.

How is it when you can't put emotions to metaphor?

Suit 2: acrylic on panel, 8.2012

Suit #1: Acrylic, 8.16.2012, 8x8 This is the first painting in my Suit series. This body of work is a comment on the restructuring of the banking industry and the core values of handling Americas money by large corporations and banks.

Some artist's art is their fame and their product is secondary.

I find myself still in the middle of reinventing myself. My paintings seem to be about busy work right now. Figuring out what it means to paint with acrylics is redefining my imagery. Inspiration wise I seem to be floating between Guston and Franz Klien. Size wise I have shrunk down to 5x7, 5x5, 12 x 16s, mainly because of my neck problems. I hope soon I can find some groove because right now I feel like I am painting to be busy. This wall street tie and jacket series seems to predictable and illustrative. At this point I do not want to become illustrative but I am wondering how much illustration people need to understand these paintings are not about abstraction.

Some people call me a Surrealist, I am not. I don't paint dreams. Some people call me a Hallucinatory. However, I am not tiring to get you to see something I didn't paint. There was a time I was tiring to do this, but now my work seems to be more about the act of painting and the final image is secondary. I am concerned about the quality work of the final result but the end images come about by crystallization of thought at the time of creation. What I do take from the Surrealists is automatic thought. I add emotion from the Abstract Expressionists and use the everyday as an inspiration. It is really important to understand that I "find" myself working this way. After years of training as a printmaker and trying to end up with a specific image in the end felt like I was becoming an illustrator, I felt constricted and predicable. I see Illustration as the process of creating with a specific final image in mind, thus the "sketch" and the preliminary works t

Title: Portrait of Philip K Dick, Acrylic, 6.2012