Luke DeLalio : Interdisciplinary Artist

Im my artist statement I wrote I don't like to talk much about pieces, and here I am doing a whole thing on one piece... I am a liar, I guess.

I thought about these girls from elementary school one day. They were plain and very quiet. And I thought that maybe they deserved a portrait, because I think they were all nice and beautiful in their way. Did they ever get kissed?

I started the rough sketches the summer of 2008. I got a good grouping for their bodies, and I dredged up their names and faces from my memory, but I had no idea of a background. 

I started work on the canvas in late May, 2009, and have been working on it off and on since.

I've evolved a kind of process with this and a few other pieces, generally abstracts, in which I draw something literal and illustrative, and then erase it. Some charcoal stays on the canvas, and then I draw the faint shapes caused by the erasing, and then I erase that and repeat the process. After a while the canvas gets really dirty and I spit on a paper towel (sorry to report) and I erase with that. But that tends to cause even more of the charcoal dust to stay on the canvas, and the shapes get more defined.

Once I get a series of shapes, I start erasing out the light spots and then the forms begin to suggest things, and I erase more to bring out those forms.

In the case of this work, I started to add color using copper mica powder, and I had to reinforce some lines I was losing, and suddenly I was drawing quite distinct lines and shapes and features everywhere, and it went downhill (or uphill, depending on your tastes) from there. 

I had a good idea of what it was about somewhere in the middle, now I have no clue but it seems to be going somewhere.

The piece is 36in x 48in, and the working title is "4 Plain Girls from Elementary School/In Whose Arms Do I Belong?"

The big influence on this piece is probably Klimt. It's like punk rock Klimt.