Art of Don DeLeva

Beacon, acrylic on panel, 5x7 2.2013 Control:Beacon#3 has landed and the weather couldn't be better. The Russian meteor can be seen in the upper left quadrant of the painting. Well maybe at this point it wasn't Russian I think it was more just a meteor because it hadn't landed yet in Russia. It was just passing by the planet JimJim 12 in the constellation HeyBroThatsMySalami. side note: Dr Sally Tweezenphoner was eating a salami sandwich when she was tweeting the name of the constellation to a fellow astronomer when her dog ran off with her sandwich .  

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

Here is the final to the Ironman portrait. I have been thinking of doing a series of these.  It's a great excuse to work in red and yellow.

This week I was asked to create a work for a show based on a super hero, if you know me at all you'll know I picked IronMan. I thought about creating a work based on bankers being Heros but after the latest buffoonery with Morgan Stanley, Chase Manhattan and the Facebook stocks I realized that at least Tony Stark is fictional and seems to care a little bit for his fellow man. So I took the painting below and started to create Ironman over it. Here is a phone shot of what it looks like now. I know it's fairly pedestrian at this point but keep in mind that this is the beginning sketches. The idea at this point is to create several cells at once with a technique called dynamism.

I paint on pieces until I feel then are finished. I know that sounds logical but how do you know when something is finished if you have no idea what the end result will be? When I started creating art I was a Photo Realist, but after 3 years I got board of coping what I was looking at, besides I didn't see the point in poorly imitating a camera.  My Art is a log or journal of where my mind has been for the hours I have been working. One thought leads into the next, that is why my work is busy and seems to be fragmented. This is how I am inspired to keep painting. Here is an example of a painting I have been working on for the last 3 weeks.  The painting seems to be at half stage, although I can never be quite sure. I have some paintings go through 3 or 4 finished states before they are complete. I think it has to do with the fact that my skill has not caught up with where the painting is going. I have had paintings take 4 years to complete, that's working on...

Untitled, Acrylic on panel, 8x10,  2012 My new room, graphite on paper, 8x8,  2012 Stroll on Wall, oil on panel, 20x30  2012 America or me?, oil on panel, 40 x40,  2012 Roots, graphite on Yupo paper,  8x11,  2012 Hedge Fund, oil on panel, 25x30  2012 Cut Throat, graphite on paper, 8x12  2012 White Collar 2, acrylic on panel, 8x8  2012 An innocent man, acrylic on panel, 8x8  2012 So here is some of the work I have completed in the last 5 months. I have made a move toward acrylics. After painting with oils for 20 years I needed to break my pattern to learn more about the images and ways to improve on the final outcome of the work. I am also going back to my instinct of image. I got caught up in trying to sell art and as I say, you either make art to sell or you make it because you have something to...

Here is a new painting I am working on, this is stage 2. Not sure where it is going I also wanted to let you know I am excited to tell you I have my first retrospective At the Fine Arts & Creatives Emporium in Everett Wa. next month.!!!

I finished SkipJack this weekend, I will post the final painting tonight... Art is about the mulit-layering of an idea like an onion peals back a layer to reveal another layer. I paint in mulit images and layers to emulate this process, thus the importance of only hinting at images. I want you to fill in the blanks of what you are looking at. After all wasn't it your teachers and your parents who told you " You only see what you want to see!" I like Rembrandt because he created realism out of small abstractions. If you look closely at his work you will see that his brushstrokes are as abstract as any of the abstract expressionists. I am working in the same manor only my final product is a lyrical mess that leaves the viewer with the responsibility of making sense of what they are looking at.

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.