Posts

Skateboard, DonDeleva: Broadway

Image
Broadway:  Skateboard Ply, acrylic paint, gold leaf, varnish,  32"x 7.5" SOLD: Derek Kaiser Skateboard Collection, Grosse Point Mi.

Deleva: evolution of Sonjia

Image
This is the evolution of Sonjia.

Portrait of Sonjia

Image
Sonjia: acrylic on clayboard, 5"x7"; She is complete. Now I am going to put her in a frame. BTW Sonjia means wisdom.
Image
BLnd109: acrylic on clayboard, 5"x7"; This painting is about 80% complete. I will post the progressions. This is the fourth painting on this panel.

Skateboard, Don Deleva: Blunt Sly, number 01

Image
Blunt Sly:  Skateboard Ply, acrylic paint, gold leaf, varnish,  32"x 7.5" SOLD: William Streeter Skateboard Collection Seattle Wa.

Skateboard, Don Deleva: El Jefe, 02

Image
El Jefe: Skateboard ply, acrylic paint, goldleaf, varnish. Sold at Dark Slide Skate park, auction 2015, Dubuque, Iowa : Adam Hansel aka DeadVolt “Emporer”. I donated this board for a fund raiser to build a skate park for kids. Dark Slide skateboard artist page

Kymera Summer 2016 Haute Cybersonality

Image
MKNDLZ , acrylic and gold leaf on clay board, 5"x7", 6/2016 Here at Kymera we want to boost your summers numbers by helping you make dealz like nobody's business! Cool and sharp, Kymera's newest summer 2016 Haute Cybersonality rounds up dollars by making sense of this market's bull. So eat the gold fish and swim with the sharks, MKNDLZ is a steal and in limited supply ! Kymera, where beauty is web deep.

the Transhuman march

Image
Please be careful, we are only animals with toys... I realize this photo is from along time ago and I am not doing my do dilagents as to its origin and credits but I thought it fit my concern. Time marches on and if this was then what is now and tomorrow?
Image
Code Warrior, acrylic on clay board. 5"x7" 6/2015 This painting came to me as I started to realize that I wanted to really learn code for the internet. I used to think it was just for a job but now I realize it's just something I want for myself.

Plastic Gnome

Image
This is a 60% complete post. Short sweet.

Portrait of Keaton

Image
Portrait of Keaton, acrylic on clay board. 5"x7" 6/2016 Collection of Buckley and Julia Guderian, Kentwood Wa.

Trans-humanism, the Chimera.

Image
Suit Hero: acrylic on clayboard, 5 ” x7 ”, 2013 The issue of human vs machine is not about the extinction of the human animal it's about the preservation of intelligence, no matter the vessel, whether it be flesh or silicon. Intelligence is of primary importance.

Museum of Northwest Art's 2016 Auction Don DeLeva

Image
I'm extremely excited to be a part of this weekend's Museum of Northwest Art's 2016 Auction. This painting will be up for auction, so if your attending, keep eye out for: " The Things I Wanted to Say", Acrylic and gold leaf, painting on panel, 18"x24"x 2.5, 4/2015. ( Janet and Linda I am looking at you ;-) ) Cheers! Update: This painting sold and is now in the Arden and Stuart Charles collection, Anacortes Wa. Thank you so much Arden and Stuart !  

50% complete

Image
Acrylic, graphite, modem printed circuit board .   Possible titles: Are We Sure We Want This? Piloting the Prosthetic Gnome. PLAZTK_G_NOM   Here is a first glimpse at PLAZTK_G_NOM. In flux, mid-painting. Still painting this big guy.

55 Bell Art Gallery, Seattle

Image
Last night was 2nd Friday, Seattle Belltown's art walk. I was at the 55 Bell Art Gallery, second floor of the Herban Legends across from the Seattle Art Institute. Good Show, Dave Bloomfield, Claudio Duran and Amanda Stalter. Here is my favorite work in the show. Claudio Duran along with his Clones: It's always good to see Dave's work, especially when you least expect it. This is my first time seeing Amanda's drawings. I was really drawn to the smaller works, they reminded me of short day dreams of nymphs that float through my mind. Yes, my mind because, I couldn't possibly pretend to know what goes through any one else's. 

Don Deleva 2004

Image
M1 Spec :  graphite, water color on Bristol paper, 11/12/2004 Surrealism and Italian Futurism were the original art movements that captured my attention. Some how using a ruler and intersecting triangles released pent up energy in me and it continues to be a source of emotional release. This period of work for me was about the total abstraction of the human body. I saw each drawing as a metaphor for emotional state of mind of the figure. Each shape, shade and texture represented the subjects compartmentalized thoughts and emotions.
Image
This is the first Skate board I painted, July of last year 2015. Since then I have painted 4 more and sold 5. The board you see here is a gift. It is in the collection of Bill Streeter of Tukwilla, Wa. He is the one that got me started painted on them. Thank you BILL!

looked at Picasso

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.

Artist Trust Benefit Auction 2013, thank you!

Image
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.
Image
 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....

Texture is Qween!

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. 

Malfuxtion 315

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
Image
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.

Pifft! Preliminary Sketches!

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
With my new job I am finally working 40 hours a week..it's a good thing! I started working as a large format digital press and digital cut operator.  This has finally given me the opportunity to concentrate on painting.   As far as my art work goes,  I sold all of my inventory last month and gained 2 new collectors who each bought 4 pieces or more. Now my studio is empty, no shows lined up, money coming in and no pressure for sales. Sales pressure is poison to me, needing to sell art to eat really effects my work in a trite illustrative way. Over the last 8 years found out that my audience is limited.   Lately, I have been looking at the paintings of Franz Klein, I find Klein's monumentality and heaviness attractive. His works like "Le Gros" have a permanence like structures of iron. ( Mark Di Suvero comes to mind. ) Looking at them closer the way his grays, blacks and whites interact with the texture of brush stroke give each work a quality of portrait or

SIlent Auction!

Image
Visit my website for more information www.dondeleva.com .
Image
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 .  

Money equalls validity in art.

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.
Image
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
Image
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?
Image
Suit 2: acrylic on panel, 8.2012

Suit #1

Image
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.

Artists and fame

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
Image
Title: Portrait of Philip K Dick, Acrylic, 6.2012
Image
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.
Image
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.
Image
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
Image
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 say, blessed and cursed are those who's art

Painting 12 for the year

Image
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.
Image
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)