Delos Andrews: Upcoming Artist Sees Life Through Abstract

For those who dreamt of becoming a well known artist is difficult in the beginning. Being able to just move their brushes across a canvas and become an instant success takes a lot of work and patience.

Being seen and heard takes a lot of patience if you ask Delos Andrews of Springville, New York. Even though he's an established artist, it still takes hard work to get noticed as an abstract and still life artist.

"I was always into art," Andrews said. "Even when I was a child I used to watch my grandfather paint, he was an artist. I was surrounded by art, my mom used to draw a little and that's where I really got my start. (It started) by watching them."

He said there were a few artists that he would study and enjoy.

"I'm into the works of Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Amedeo Modigliani, some of Claude Monet's works and shockingly Dora Carrington," He said. "I don't care for Picasso, but I am starting to study and enjoy the works of Chaim Soutine and Maurice Utrillo."

Growing up, Andrews did attend the basic courses most art students had to take such as Art History. It was through art history he found inspiration and his niche for the abstract style (Or as he puts it, "Abstract Expressionism"). He admitted that it was "a case of me not wanting to be force fed things I already knew," Andrews said. "In all of my art classes, I was learning someone else's technique. I wasn't too fond of it. In fact, I hated all my art classes."

And though he got kicked out of various art schools for his rebelliousness and struggle to be unique, he did graduate from college with a degree in art history. When asked how he finds the subjects that he paints, he responded, "I don't know, really. I just spot something weird and I'm drawn to it. Like roses. I love painting roses in various forms of abstraction. Roses are weird. Beautiful, but weird to me."

"It doesn't matter what the subject is, really, just as long as it's weird. I'm also attracted to the mundane subjects that most artists try to stay away from," he explained. It's the only way I can paint ... from the heart else I'll just be like any other average artist you see who paint for selfish and self-serving reasons."

Andrews said he refuses to fit into any set mold most art students often try to fit into, he has to have his freedom to express himself through oils, acrylics and watercolors.

"I'm most at home using oil paints," he said. "To be honest, I love the smell of oil paints. With oils you can work at a slower pace, meaning you can do things you normally can't do with any other mediums such as impasto (over a period of a few days ), or wet-in-wet. I would like to work in acrylics because they have advantages in their own right. But for now I prefer oils and water mixable oils."

Andrews said he takes his artwork seriously, "I'm not a good sketch artist, at best I can do simple sketches but nothing solid. My palette consists of no more than eight colors not including titanium white and ivory black. I use a limited palette. (And) after painting all day, I play my videogames."

Andrews is currently preparing for upcoming gallery shows in Springville, N.Y. in May, anyone interested in seeing his work can view samples on his homepage located at www.tagworld.com/Abstracted_One