Art of Don DeLeva

Ive been looking at Picasso's work from the 50s and 60s as reference for a painting I am creating called "War begets war" and "40 miles out."   I took photos of "wars' progression. I posted them on Facebook I will post them here in the next few days. " 40 miles" has more reference to Picasso then "war..."

"YOU MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT IF YOU IT'S ANGERING SOMEBODY." "I LOVE THE JUXTAPOSITION OF SOMETHING BROKEN WITH SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL GROWING OUT OF IT." Josh Homme

I forgot all about the photographer Roger Ballen. In the same way I am attacked to Joel Peter Witkin so too am I to Ballen. For me I think it is the sense of shamanic reality to everyday life. Black and white photographs have an other worldly quality to them.

It feels good to have the 2013 Seattle Artist Trust select a painting of mine to be included in the 2014 benefit auction.

It's been a while but all this time I have been working on a panel that I have been working on for the last 8 months. I have spent on average 2 hours a day on this piece. Sometimes I think I should just toss it and start another panel but for some reason I just hang on and keep painting on it. It has a sister piece that I have work on for 7 month but I think that work is finished. It's a wall street portrait, it feels like the last( who knows?). About 3 weeks ago I finally gave up coding to go back to art. Coding really wasn't that hard for me to give it up since it never worked for me. I spent 5 years working really hard trying to find a job coding and then spent the last 2 years trying to stop painting and art so I could learn JavaScript. I must have done a pretty good job at not painting because now...nothing comes to me and there is no flow to the process. I actually think this might be a good thing but man I am lost! I can't seem to concentrate on one thing and I...

There is nothing like honesty, I mean it really is all we have. Honesty with yourself is even more rare. Some people just bleed it out of themselves and it shows in thier work like the singer and song writer for Polvo or the painter Max Ernst. I try to be honest but damn if accolades and money get in the way of making decisions that take a painting the way it should go. A this point i am going back to my roots to find out when i started painting with earthy desires in mind. I mean what if i should be printing instead of painting?

It has been a long time but at this point I really don't care. This morning I took a long shower and felt that hot water hit my back and dreamed of a future long away in a distant past. I don't mean to be vague but now my ships are leaving the harbor. Vague as it may be I don't know what to do with it. I can't seem to put it together so I just have to put it out there and hope someone else gets it or makes sense of it. I hear voices tell me to put it all together this way or that, but really they are voices telling me to make some sort of sense of something so you, the people, will understand it. Well I am out of Ideas and confusing conglomerations of ill fitting parts that don't help you understand. That's not your fault by the way besides the fact that you have all the faculties to make your own sense out to it. Maybe it's not for my generation to know. I think if anything I am creating myths for the generations that will be here in the tomorrow ho...

What actualy is an existential crysis? I have been thinking about the birth place of ideas and motivation. I had this idea that maybe they come from not wanting to be alone. If you create something, anything,you have just proven you exist that thing is now in exsitance for others to see and bring into thier conscience.

Being in reinvention mode is painstakingly tedious. I am not the same person I was 3 months ago, a LOT has changed for the better, thank god. I have been painting twice as much as I was in the last 5 years. Images don't just come to me anymore, I am having to work at them with sanding out scraping and gessoing. I will try to keep a visual log of the work so you can witness the changes as the work evolves.

Some times i just loose my way. Im not sure i think its when i don't have an image in mind. Sometimes its also like when people say things they have no idea what they are talking about, like "art imitates life." What does that mean? Picasso didn't imitate life and niether did Van Gogh, Rembrandt, the list goes on, Duchamp did kind of except that he stole from real life. Infact Picasso said Good artist borrow and great artists steel. Anyway i am typing this on a nook so forgive my spelling and stuff. Actually i have no excuse, i should know how to spell by now.

 Today, I drempt Salvador Dali hugged and kissed me. He gave me his blessings in a cool blueish damply lit room near his home in Figueres. He said nothing and all I could do is cry as he when to pick from a wall of paintings, one to give me. I remember his hair styled as Velazquez and pearlescent light obscuring his features. It was real enough to make me question if it really did happen. As I woke I could feel my face in the contortions of a cry. BTW: Yes, I realize this is a self portrait of Velazquez but this is a representation of how the dream look and felt... "The muse of mortality Vanitas paintings became a popular genre in the 17th century, usually juxtaposing lush still lifes with skulls as reminders that death waits on all of us. Plunking a traditional example by an unknown 17th century artist in the middle of Dali's surrealist works may confuse at first because Dali didn't paint vanitas as we think of them. But the show argues that he created...

So the other day I posted some weird azz stuff about Subjective Polymorphism. Well believe it or not it is a name that I researched and created as a way if explaining how it is that I paint. Trust me when I say I didn't pull this name out of thin air, let me explain. I have always wanted people to realize that they make up there on reality for the most part, we spend most of our life in or heads making scense of our own reality so that we can form some semblance of sanity and meaning to our life. My painting plays off this.  

Letter from the medium, Let the medium be itself, then tease it to suggest images that were never meant to be created. It takes an ability to see with the minds eye and have an open mind enough to let shapes and colors suggest  anything and everything. Then it is just a matter of you choosing what you want to bring out. Leave the integrity of the original vision so that from a visual stand point the viewer doesn't know weather the image was purposeful or accidental. It's as if the medium is talking to you and letting you  know this is the way it reacts to . "by throwing a sponge full of color at a wall it leaves a stain in which a fine landscape can be seen... as well as heads of men, animals, battles, rocks, seas, clouds and other things...In this you will find marvelous ideas because the mind of the painter is stimulated to new inventions by obscure things. ” Quote: Salvador Dali

Subjective Polymorphism: *Subjective: Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world . *Polymorphism: Many objects made from one. In the context of object-oriented programming , is the ability to create a variable, a function, or an object that has more than one form. Subjective Polymorphism is a style of painting were one image is created in a way to suggest many but the image is personal similar to looking at clouds and seeing faces animals....

My paintings come to me like found objects. My painting process is similar to walking on an over grown path, seeing a sparkle in the ruff and excavating to it like an archeologist. This has been the most exciting way to paint for me. It make me feel as if I discovered an image and by supporting it with composition, contrast and color I am revealing something that has been hiding in the chaos of texture. Texture is a big tool of mine it is my muse. 

As I settle into this new job my work seems to be gaining ground slowly. Leaving the world of selling art supplies seems to have helped me concentrate on what it is I am painting. Everyday day conversations never seem to cover art or painting and at this point I don't miss them. Painting has become urgent, unlike it has been in years. It's strange to be painting from the moment instead of the preconceived idea, its like I have started to learn how to make art from the shear pleasure of making a mark again. Now, the mark is not trying to impress the culmination of marks like it doess if you force them. The real question is are you forcing them to empress or are you making marks for the shear enjoyment of their power and elegance?  This is a self doubt all artist feel deeply. 

FEK315 walks in threw the door, looks up at the clock and sees a wedge of time, then walks a few more steps to see what happened within that chunk. "15 minutes? It took me 15 minutes to walk through the door? What the hell did I do in that pie wedge?" Goth Cindy Turns to him. "See, this is what  am talking about. You have no idea that you were talking to me about Long Range Missiles. You where calling them sniper weapons." FEK315 looks at the ground "Cindy, I am really not sure I understand what you are saying." "You loose time FEK." "How is that?" "Dah phuck I should know, your the lunatic!"  FEK315 grabs Cindy's latex suited hips with grappling hands, pulls her close to his face and dives deep into her eyes.  His zombie stare makes her shutter and slightly surrender. "Goth Cindy I know where you are. I see you in your head with Auto Cannon rounds passing you like light coated street flies, whistling razors c...

Its funny how I tell you I don't work from sketches and then the 2 days ago I doddle some image and now I want to work from the sketch...LOL! I'll post the sketch. my image of Zen: George Condo Artist.

It's rare I work from sketches mainly because the sketch is part of the work. I usually start on a panel and work out all my ideas there. "Preliminary Sketches" are the being of the work so to leave them out is like throwing away the bones. For illustrators "Preliminary Sketches" are were you work out your mistakes. I am not an illustrator. Every mark I make is an important part of the final work. Sometimes a mark is there from the begin of the work and becomes a pivotal part of the painting. The evidence of the mark is exemplified with the constant rebuilding of the original mark. How many times have you made a sketch of an idea only to realize you like the sketch more then the final work? That is because the spontaneity is worked out of the piece.  The first marks are important, they record the raw emotion that caused you to record the idea in the first place. Even if the original marks are scraped out the evidence of your erassing the marks are still there. ...

Robert Motherwell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_evtvqBawY