Art of Don DeLeva

These block prints are portraits of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Former First Lady of the United States and Cameron Howe Played by: Mackenzie Davis; TV show: Halt and Catch Fire Neo Cubist block print portrait of Jackie Kennedy blue:  linocut print on lana cotton rag paper, 5"x7" 4/2019 Neo Cubist block print portrait of Cameron Howe blue:  linocut print on lana cotton rag paper, 5"x7" 4/2019 Neo Cubist block print Cameron Howe multi-color:  linocut print on lana cotton rag paper, 5"x7" 4/2019 Neo Cubist block print portrait of Jackie Kennedy:  linocut print on lana cotton rag paper, 5"x7" 4/2019 These are the first prints I have pulled since the I was given an etching press. They are also the first consecutive pulled prints since graduate school.  My goal is to start using the press and create prints on a consistan basis. 

Untitled  20x20 still in progress. This painting is in progress, I would say it is around 70% complete. As I start to explain and define with words on my website what it is I am doing it seems like my painting is changing. I know this sounds obvious but seeing the manifestation of words into pictorial representation is interesting.

Be for the turn. B4 the Turn: 5" x 7" , acrylic painting on wood panel. This painting was more of a historic time marker for me. I wanted to designate that this painting was created before the birth of  of AI. Don’t blame me! The Jeanie is out of the bottle. This Dali like, art work notes this present time in history, before cybernetic enhancement have gone commercial.  “B4 The Turn”, literally means, before the turn of accepting commercial grade neural devices as a part of normal everyday commerce and exchange. In this cubist painting I have combined a portrait with geometry to suggest a surreal impression of what a synthetic, analytic and enhanced thought might look like to the Transhuman cyborg like artist.

Here are two works I am working on since the 2019 Museum of Northwest Art auction entry. This is a linoleum plate. It will be a color plate .   This is the 3 phase of one of my Neo Cubist paintings. My education is in printing, my roots are in drawing and I taught myself painting. A few weeks ago a good friend gave me an etching press and I am starting to print linocuts. I see this moving towards etchings at some point, but for now I have to get my printing work flow down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdPjscGydU4

She said "I can't find the sun. I am having problems with my retina translation monitors, ever since I switched my color space to RGBA_Adobe-Rose 1.6.". I couldn't figure out what she meant by the "Sun", because she was feeling really down and was squinting at the fire ball in the sky. This was her third time mentioning this in the very same tone of voice...pulses 3... and in dark measure.

Yesterday I got this thought of a story that has to do with companies making Biochips that plug into the human skull. These chips augment intelligence and physical traits of human animals. I saw some of the companies being, Microsoft- Nitrosoft, Apple- Fuji, IBM:business Nike- Ball, MAC- Fashion, and a few more that specialize in there type of intelligence. For example: Nike: would have chips that would specialize in muscle coordination, balance, things that give athletes an edge. MAC: would aid in facial muscle control, skin melanin manipulation, hair color, nail length, things that could change your physical appearance. Ways of walking weight loss, leg and arm control. Smith and Wesson: Zoom vision, Night vision hand coordination, balance all aimed at civilian gun ownership and sport shooting. What do these these augmentations look like online when you add analog physical features? What do these cyber identities look like when you add data graphics and physical features tog...

My phone doesn't share my delusions, it exposes them and perpetuates them. We look to the phone in the same way we look at our best friend or child. We ask it questions, adorn and coddle it, tell it our inner most secrets  but we don't lie to it. We don't lie to it to save it's feelings, more we lie to ourselves and only look at the first page of search results that we think affirms our expected answer.

I was seeing it from the inside of an plane fuselage along the atmosphere's edge. A rumble and then a feeling of falling... I could see earth from the window and felt the gravitational pull. Everyone in the fuselage was lying down, sleeping or lounging in soft warm cabin light and white sheet bedding. I kissed a long, gentle, slow lipstick kiss to my life. Then I thought "Aim for the Indian Ocean it should be a large target to make a soft landing and the water will extinguish the flames"... But looking back on it,I realize that splashing in water from this height is just like hitting concrete at 20,000 MPH, besides I wasn't the one piloting the fall.

This morning came with a thick fog  "I only have i's 4 U" seeped through my mindscape with inky black of cold dark space. You can ask me why things like this happen but I can't tell the younger ones because there is no Google in my mind. Besides it would only give you an answer that was human conceived for the next 25 years. Made with humans in mind by humans for humans wanting to find their purpose. But these thoughts are being interrupted by my  morning protein mega tablet scrambled with crisp edges. Something I discovered by mistake by almost burning my eggs 15 years ago. Hell yes I like it. What is the motivation for A.I. to excel at being ?  If humans want sex, riches, money etc... what would motivate a machine to evolve? Will machine learning have programs that make random mistakes? (the invention of Post it Notes). Look it up on Google since we already made the mistakes that AI didn't have to. If we do program in mistakes then arnt we just making huma...

In the years before our vision was electronic enhanced I could see things that were not there. I lost the ability to see my thoughts when I got my zoom and macro enhancements. So weird how I thought I would have been able to keep that gift I had. How much of my mind is "hooked up" to the visualization of  reality? Yes my illusion of reality. Diving into a rainy Seattle at 5:23am in the morning is an inky experience with the janky sever lights blinking from every building, crane and oncoming cars.

This year's challenges have been convoluted and time consuming. So much so that painting has not been in immediate attention. While my mind wishes there could be less change, life seems to have sharp changes in mind that everyone has to face. I just need to loose my perception of life and welcome reality.

I started this year's MoNA, Museum of Northwest Art Auction 2018, painting this week. I am going to do a progression of the painting so you can see how it comes together. 4.01.2018- Due to several life changes this last month I have had little time to work on the painting I was going to donate to the MoNA auction. SO this painting will be worked on but will not appear in the MoNA 2018 Auction. The first post starts March 3 2018 just scroll down to see the first entry: No. 5 front 03/07/2018 I decided at this point to start to centralize an image.  It is so ominous mixing grey from earth tones, Ocher Yellow, Iron Gesso, Oxide black and Indian red. This thick mix of opaque grey blots out the sky, it is the wall graffiti block out color that never seems to match the concrete.  No. 4, front 03/07/2018 No. 3,  front 03/5/2018   This is the first layer / wash of color to build up the structure. It is an old technique I learned from my oil painting...

Let me just preface this painting with the fact that paper dolls can not cut themselves out... title 1: Paper Doll title 2: Once I Was A Paper Doll, Now I Am A CSS Stylesheet Medium: Acrylic on panel Size: 6" x 6" x .05" Date: 12/17/2017 C-log: #12172017 Web: www.dondelevaart.com Story: Maybe the second title needs more explaining. One night, after coding my website and drinking numerous RedBulls I fell asleep at the keyboard... I dreamt I was paper doll and that my friends and I were going out clubbing in Seattle. I wanted to change my clothes but paper dolls can't change their clothes and neither can they cut out their outfit. So instead of trying to use scissors I decided to code myself a new look in CSS and sure enough, it worked! I got so carried away that I fashioned myself a Prince like outfit minus the ruffles but adding a string of pearls.

This is part of a new sort of post method for me since, I seem to be so sporadic. I am going to try to give a photo evolution  history for each painting. This is the first one. At this point there is no title of the painting, but you will see as I paint the title of the work will change. 3/4/18-UPDATE on the stump painting: Still nothing. It is sitting in my studio staring at me. So times it take months. I have had paintings take years to finish.  2/08/18- At this point I seem to have come to a stand still on this painting. Not really sure why, I just can't seem to get a good look on what is going on and where it is going. Time away from it is a good thing. No. 9 front 01/31/2018 At this point I am around 70% complete. I will be saturating the colors but I am still discovering the image. No.8 front 01/26/2018 A working title : Kitty and the Swan No.7 side- 01/22/2018 Sometimes I find turning a  painting on it's side and paint helps to find out th...

Candy Breath is a first attempt to bring both my Pop Surrealist and Abstraction tendencies together. As you view the painting you can start to see cartoonist features blend into realistic features that are abstracted and then disappear. I do this give the impression of a personality changing as mood changes and conversation ebbs and flows. This painting SOLD in the "VISIONS EN ROUGE" (link to show) , Confluence Gallery (link to gallery) , Twisp Wa. 12/2017

Kitty Noire:  wood panel, silver mylar wall paper, acrylic paint, varnish,  6"x 6"x 0.5 . 08.09.2017 I started painting on wall paper, this is on Silver Mylar it's more of an experiment. At work I have access to so many types of surfaces that I decided to start taking advantage of the scraps and recycling bins.

RoboCat:  wood panel, acrylic paint, varnish,  6"x 6"x 0.5 . 08.09.2017 SOLD : Trisha Gallagher Collection, Tacoma, WA-->

Here is a photo of my last 4 paintings. Keep in mind these are the single images that make up my abstracts.