Terry DeLapp Paintings

Matillaja Poppy
Bird Farm
Bougainvillea
Sunflower in Mason Jar
Storm II
Huron Farm
Carnation and Chinese Bowl
Flower Shed, Lompoc
Los Osos

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Born in Pasadena in 1934, Terry DeLapp studied at the Chouinards Art Academy at UCLA. DeLapp currently lives and works in Cambria, California. He has been exhibiting his paintings since the early 1980's throughout the United States, most recently (2008-2010) in Scottsdale, Arizona, Charlotte, North Carolina and Charleston, South Carolina. His paintings can be found at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Denver Museum of Art, and in many private collections, including those of Steve Martin, Martin Mull, Joan Rivers, Julian Ganz, Warren Adelson, Nancy Meyers, Brian Grazer, Martin Short, and Andy Williams.
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ARTIST STATEMENT

"Originally, my art was meant as a political motivator. I was interested in expressing my views, especially those on the environment and utilized my art as a means of doing so. I was unconcerned with the 'art' in my art, but rather concentrated on relaying an 'other meaning' that would register with the viewer as a statement of my concerns."By the early 1990s, though, and politics aside, I re-thought my commitment to what had become my main concern: the environment, most specifically the area where I lived, the Central Coast of California. I realized how enchanted I was with the beauty of this place, the exquisite patterns and colors formed by nature and man as they vied for space in the agricultural lands between the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. "I did away with the subliminal messages and devices of my earlier work and concentrated on work that could, to some degree, match the Loveliness of my inspiration. It was, and is, telling the old story in the old way, relying on painterly achievement to best convey my concern for the land and what is on it."Although I am primarily a landscape painter, my work is not Plein-aire, my finished paintings are easel work, stylistically Neo-Tonalist. I work within a confine of classic composition and limited palette using the medium (acrylic), in the manner of oil paint; glazing, scumbling, building textures all in a traditional way, hopefully expanding those disciplines to further artistic growth. My work is easily accessible, perhaps even simplistic. It gives beauty a chance." -Terry DeLapp

EXHIBITIONS & COLLECTIONS

ExhibitionsBakersfield Museum of Art Wendy Hoff Fine Art, New York Perspective Fine Arts, New York Denver Art Museum, Colorado Zaplin / Lampert Gallery, Santa Fe Spanierman Gallery, New York George Stern Fine Arts, Los Angeles Sullivan-Goss, Santa BarbaraCollectionsWarren and Ian Adelson Michael and Barbara Borghi L. Rogers Brandon Louise Fletcher Debra Force Jullan and JoAnn Ganz San Diego Museum of Art Denver Museum of Art Brian Grazer Maurice and Marge Katz Steve Martin David and Norma Mcintyre Nancy MeyersMartin MullDon Rymal Martin Short Andy Williams Robart Zmeckis
GALLERY

LANDSCAPE
SEASCAPE
STILL LIFE

LANDSCAPE

Stratford
Cloud Over Madera
Blue Barn and Wheat Field
Sunrise at Pixley
Bird Farm
Blue Barn, Lompoc
Autumn Farm
Huron Farm
Fields at Pixley
Four in the Afternoon
Flower Shed, Lompoc
Los Osos
King City
Quonset Hut and Grainery-Hanford
Storm over Hanford
On the 46
Sunset Nipomo
Water Tower at Stratford
Stratford
Mustard and White Barn
Yellow Barn Nipomo
Summer
Rainy Day Pixley
Moonrise Over Tranquility
Los Alamos
Green Barn and Red Tree Avenal
Blue Barn Kingsburg
Edge of Town, Hanford

SEASCAPE

Close Out
Close Out II
Gray Day, Marine Terrace
Spindle Drift
Long Wave
Small Wave
Storm II
Central Coast
By the Cove

STILL LIFE

Mason Jar and Pale Roses
Dahlias in Glass Vase
Carnations in French Pot
Carnation and Chinese Bowl
Sunflower in Mason Jar
Bougainvillea
Carnation and Jar
Eucalyptus and Yellow Flowers
Matillaja Poppy
Alstromerias in Chinese Bowl
Violet Iris in Tall Jar
Dahlia and Milk Bottle
Pink Roses in Glass Jar
Gerbera Daisy
Yellow Roses
Yellow Roses and Chinese Bowl

ARTICLES

Articles

Remembering Places

Remembering Places Dahlias in Glass Vase_24x18.jpg

Remembering Places by Todd Wilkinson

Inspired by pastoral central California, Terry DeLapp's paintings are testaments to what once was.From Cannery Row in coastal Monterey all the way to the hinters east of Eden, John Steinbeck loved to sketch narratives in which characters found relief from their troubles in quiet pastoral landscapes. Today, there are many who say Terry DeLapp paints this same region of Central California as well as Steinbeck wrote about it. Like Steinbeck, DeLapp's vision is drawn from long, inspirational drives through the rural countryside. And akin to the famous author, he chronicles - rather dramatically - a part of America that is almost mythical in its symbolism yet fleeting from our modern memory. Steinbeck, DeLapp says reverently, was in many regards a naturalist and conservationist who wielded his pencil with the same sensitivity to landscape that painters try to exude with a brush. Every day that DeLapp cruises out of Cambria, his home, into the San Joaquin Valley, he is determined to remind us that tranquil pieces of Steinbeckian farm county still remain. His tonalist landscapes frequently feature a single barn or farmhouse that divides horizontal planes between endless sky and a soothing blur of row crops. They possess a literary quality that defies literalness, says New York gallery owner, writer and art collector Warren Adelson. "You wouldn't describe Terry's landscapes as scenic, at least not in any general pictorial sense," Says Adelson. "Rather what they convey is a strong sense of place.""There are places that when you drive by you just want to get out and run through the grass," says DeLapp, a third-generation Californian. "They are real, but they are almost ideally real. I see those farms and think that I'd like to dwell there forever. The fact that I can't, and that some of these places might not be there the next time I come this way, is what wears on me. Painting is a way of remembering moments." Telling though they may be, DeLapp's paintings do not reveal a hint of the fascinating life he has lived. Besides being a painter, he is a gifted writer who has befriended actor Steve Martin, one of several high-profile individuals, who now collect his work. At one point, DeLapp was as well known for dealing fine art as he was for creating it.Born in Pasadena, CA, in 1934, he attended local public schools as well as a military academy until his family moved to Cambria when he was a teenager. Upon graduation from high school there, he attended junior college, then enrolled in the liberal arts program at UCLA, which, in turn, led him to the Chouinard Art Institute. Many of DeLapp's contemporaries were on a fast track to become motion-picture illustrators at Warner Bros. and Disney. Others were taught by their post-modernist instructors to reject realism in favor of abstract expressionism. DeLapp ended up adhering to realism, striving to capture on canvas the aesthetic emotion of the pastoral environment he experienced earlier. However, by now married and with kids to raise, he needed to support his family, so he began buying and selling works by 19th and 20th century masters. In particular, he became an expert in Hudson River School and landscape painters who headed west.Dealing art was a vital part of his education, DeLapp says, and he acknowledges that it influenced mightily his ability to go sparer with his brush strokes. "The instruction offered at UCLA, at that time, was focused on students totally doing their own thing. You painted for the people, and if it didn't benefit the masses then you burned it up. And even if it did appeal to the masses, you still burned it up." DeLapp says. "Eyeballing the works of American masters as an art dealer my own way rather than succumbing to abstract expressionism." If pressed for a definition of his own work, DeLapp describes himself as a "neo-tonalist," reinterpreting the approach of a tonalist who thrived a century ago. He mentions James Abbott McNeill Whistler, George Inness, Xavier Martinex, and Julian Alden Weir as compass points but notes that he veers away from impressionism. "In my mental eye," he says, "all things are reduced to color planes which relate to one another, rather than portraying a juxtaposition of colors." Early in his career, DeLapp worked primarily in oils, but an allergic reaction necessitated a change to acrylics. In his studio, he works from two easels, with his last finished painting setting the standard for the next work. Across a fresh canvas, he makes a pencil drawing drawing that forms the foundation for the planes of paint to follow. A typical work will have between 10 and 15 coats of paint, the first ones thin and mixed down with turpentine, the latter three coats applied thick and full of texture. DeLapp rigidly adheres to nine colors, mixes them, and only resorts to pure color if he needs a distinctive highlight. As Adelson says, DeLapp's tendencies have always been to exude the nuances of soft light and atmosphere rather than the bold and bright. Mark Zaplin, owner of Zaplin Lampert Gallery in Santa Fe, NM which recently hosted a highly successful exhibition of DeLapp's larger works, adds that, with DeLapp, less is definitely more. "Terry doesn't try to bombard the viewer," Zaplin says. "He speaks a subtle language."DeLapp is really a devotee of two provinces that divide at the crest of the Coast Mountain Range. One realm tilts westward toward the sea across the emerald expanses of Los Padres National Forest; the other extends east into California's produce heartland. Although he is intrigued by the marine environment, it is the agrarian scene that keeps calling him back, something deep into the Central Valley, to linger in the landscape. "When you're living in the city, you don't talk about how rural landscapes are changing, and emotionally you don't see it," DeLapp says. "I was shocked when I returned to Cambria as an adult. I had no idea we were losing so much ground so fast."As he winds along county roads, DeLapp searches for a reason to stop. Before he pulls out his sketch pad and camera, he likes to walk through the vistas that eventually become his foregrounds. He has been chased off of properties by farmers who wonder what he's up to, but he's also struck up thoughtful conversations with field laborers. The actual farm owners, he says, often live in distant cities and tend to view their property simply as a venue for commerce. At a one-man show of paintings hosted by the Bakersfield Museum of Art, he tells how a few land owners approached him and inquired why he painted broccoli and rhubarb fields blue-green. "Until they thought about it awhile, and were told what farm I was painting, they didn't realize what they were looking at," DeLapp says. "It was almost as if they were colorblind."DeLapp recalls one interaction with a field worker that led to the title of a painting. He was painting rows of broccoli beyond Salinas when a man working a hoe approached him and chatted. In broken English, the man mentioned the cool of the morning and the advancing sun. "He tried to find the right words and said that soon there would be "hot work rising," meaning that as the day wore on, it was going to turn hot as hell," DeLapp says. "I liked his description and decided to use it for the painting." The work features tonal layers of green influenced by the presence if morning mist and the hint of mirage approaching with the heat of the day. In some ways, DeLapp regards his pieces as testaments to what once was. He remembers long corridors of eucalyptus trees that used to flank Highway 101 and served as windbreaks; in recent years they've been cut down to clear path for crop-dusting planes, spreading pesticides across the industrial farms that have replaced quaint mom-and-pop operations. "There is no shade, " he says. "It's all gone, and so is a particular landscape feel that went along with it." Fortunately for us, DeLapp's paintings serve as a permanent visual reference. They are places where we, too, can dwell for longer than a moment.- Southwest Art Magazine, April 2003 Edition

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CONTACT ME Terry DeLapp Gallery P.O. Box 718 Cambria, CA 93428 Office: (805) 927-9416 Email: terrydelapp_gmail.com

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TERRY DELAPPPAINTINGSTerry DeLapp GalleryPO Box 718Cambria, CA 93428(805) 927-9416

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