Art of Don DeLeva

  This is a work in progress. The original finished painting was sanded out, named Griffin. It was shown at the Confluence Gallery in my first solo show, entitled  Techina 2022.   

   Kittycus 5 : Drawing, graphite on HP WCP, June 2025.  Schrodinger's cat before he was the inspiration of Schrodinger's.  ORIGINAL ART Price: $60.00

Lately, I have noticed how often I go to art history for answers to problems that I haven't solved yet while working. This morning I was studying a Todd Schorr  painting that I had been looking at the night before.  Go to:   https://toddschorr.com/    he is a master!!!!!!!  The painting was: The Riddle Of The Magician's  Bunny Trick Solved Through The Use of Squared Off Angles. (Wow, imagine that! A cubist painting? Yeah, well what else would stop me in my tracks?) I have such a habit of finding answers back in art history. My 7 years of  higher education, encouraged me not to "Reinvent the wheel". However...the wheels of the 21st century have anti-locking disk breaks and rotation tracking tires, besides metal alloy wheels...  Or maybe it was me learning how Todd Schorr solved the problem so I could reinterpret it, disassemble the steps, and build a new tool for my tool box rather then poorly quote Todd Schorr and embarrass myself......

Only the best! Painting with natural, metal, earth, pigments, for me feels as if I am moving and folding elemental reality at a microscopic level.

Tics are like the passing of time and the electrified energy of air and the particles we are made of. 

Messenger: graphite on hot press watercolor paper, 4x6. 6/18/2025. Drawing. 

Camero and the Triple A Battery  Some people are crowded landscapes with ambition in mind to stake there claim on this world.

I paint portraits in abstract form for people who realize humans are abstract personalities. -Don DeLeva

 I am told the LHC smashes particles together to find new ones and to understand how a "Big Bang " may have taken place. In one way I am not really concerned weather I am right or not about the purpose of the LHC, although I might find out I am utterly wrong about the purpose of the LHC.  What attracts me to the LHC is more about the side effects of smashing particles particles together and how many universes we bring in to existence and destroy during these smashing sessions.  Think about this, history repeats itself. What if human animals are just a force of nature,, like weather, that creates universes not only in thought but in physicality. Placing particles of minerals, metals and dyes in arrangements on wood panels for me is a way of creating a universe. Once you whitens it or you assign your own icons to the images if images are fabricated or hinted at. Enough for now, time to paint.  

Sometimes i just get ahead of myself. I forgot about the work and just get so involved with trying to find a place to show.  These last 2 month have been about getting my website in functional order. These last 2 years of fortune with two solos at Confluence and disrupting life changes have kept me focused on the basics of maintaining the every day. The heartbreakers for me have been the possible opportunities I had to back down from. The funny part is that I am not sure if these opportunities were fabricated by my own delusions or vague innuendos of reality.   I am happy to say that the last few years of trying to slow down time and listen to the moment has been really good for me.  Diving in to isolation and trying to control my own interpretation of time and control bring me far deeper rewards then any list of exhibitions. I can only be a message in a bottle or one weed that grows in the middle of the freeway on a rock in a infinite universe that offers each of us...

Yellow Camero: 4"x6", oil on panel. 7-6-2023    I am kind of feeling a direction. these small paintings are coming out so fast. Currently, I am  painting with a turp + sun thick + cold press medium. It dries fast like overnight. I add cold press and damar as the painting progresses, in a fat over lean fashion. This mixture is very thin and blend ability of brush strokes is limited. it is almost best for drawing and scrubbing. However the sun thickened linseed oil is good but it's more about drying then getting a reflective pool of graduated color like stand oil does.  I'm telling you this because I have been thinking about a sunthick +  stand oil + turps mix. This should give me a full body, blend able medium that dries faster then just stand oil and turps. It will leave an enamel type finish and color.   

This is a Camero 4"x6" oil on panel. 2023bsai  This is the first of a suite of small paintings. It is called a Camero. Yes, it is like the car however it is spelled with an "e" instead of and "a". This is the first one.

  This is a Techina head that can be inverted to show the duality of the symbolize the positivity and negativity of all actions and nonactions.

Techina #12 ink on paper 2023. I love art history. It is such an important thing to know that you can create anything you want to create in the way you want to create it.  It has taken me soooooooooooooooooooooooooo long to realize this. It is so is important to know why you create or maybe not. For me I had no choice I felt to the drag of a pencil lead on paper and I was just hooked.     

Techina   Techina #01 | Sketch, ink on paper, 4x4, 2023 Don DeLeva red drawing Techina. As they feel it in the cold the smooth plastic tic tic of water that corrodes the soft milk jug in to  tiny particles. She is the The Techina of plastic corrosion.  Techina #02 | Sketch, ink on paper 4x5, 2023 Don DeLeva drawing, Techina #02, ink on paper, I say this as a witness NOT as a judge. Sometimes I just count the squares of pavement when I walk until I remember that this concrete is sidewalk, in the city, on 45th street in Seattle, walking east to eighth street, with passing cars, plastic tents, free way over pass, with only East or West access, floating cars underneath and shrieking left side currant. Let's forget the count because I see movement ahead of me. Then pass the tents, plastic rain and hollow white-claw cans, shoes and shredded fabric and street cams and street paint and refrigerator doors and the binary silver boxes that are rain safe and feed off of 24 hour force...

 This painting is 24" x 60" x 1.5", Oil on board. 

  She Hums 24/7 : Drawing, graphite and Stablio on toned paper. 6.5" x 8" 5/ 2022 It's true, she does stare at the sky all day. Maybe looking for saucers, a ghost or two but most of the time it is the Ravens, Crows, Coyotes and Jackrabbits that offer opportunity to not feel so insignificant in her blind state. I would assume that carrying a current of 1s and 0s, 24/7 can be electrifying but that means you have to step outside yourself to see it. But who has time to see the truth when there is money to be made and another facebook post that proves you did have a bite of "The" 12 foot long chilly Frankfurter at Fudgefest. I know, RIGHT? 

Eventually it will get to appoint where we need electricity to keep our bodies animate and conscience. I say this because how many people know how to make a fire from 2 stones?   

Drawing on red money envelope.