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A Conversation with Deladier Almeida

SmithKlein Gallery's Latest Artist Depicts Landscapes Unlike Any Other

Cherry Creek Lifestyle Magazine sat down with Deladier Almeida, Brazilian-American figurative painter eminent for his gestural paintings of landscapes—depicting rural-like qualities that your everyday spectator sees in everyday life. From trees to hills to roads to bodies of water, Deladier uses a plethora of terrestrial colors and defined, embellished shapes to portray images that we are able to not only admire but are able to relate to. An important facet to any Deladier piece, reflection of reality and experience prevails in allowing its viewers to harmonize what is visual to what is internal.

To view Deladier's collection locally, visit SmithKlein Gallery while walking down Boulder's historic Pearl Street Mall. 

Cherry Creek Lifestyle:  What made you want to take your art and turn it into a career?

Deladier Almeida: This is something that I have been doing since I was a child. It always came very naturally to me. It was always a goal of mine.

Cherry Creek Lifestyle: Was there an artist that inspired you as a child or was this something that was just of complete aptitude?

Deladier Almeida: Yeah, it was pretty spontaneous. There wasn’t anyone in my family that did anything like this. Sometimes it can be a movie or an image that changes one person’s life. Art changed mine and I just stuck with it throughout my life. I studied architecture and industrial design in Brazil and graduated from the University of California, Davis in 1990. Now, I just paint what I see. The idea is to have a unique view of things so that what I do creates enough interest that people want to have my work as a part of their lives.

Cherry Creek​​​​​​​ Lifestyle: What is the importance behind people seeing your work specifically?

Deladier Almeida: An artist must have an audience in order for the work to be influenced. That is very empowering to me. How I want people to be influenced by what I do is part of how I go about forming my vision and my language. It’s important for people to see my work because it is a reflection of the context that I live in.

Cherry Creek​​​​​​​ Lifestyle: What kind of experience does a Del Almeida piece tend to give its spectator(s)?

Deladier Almeida: My work is going to affect people based on their history, their interests, their own baggage—you cannot predict how the work is going to be perceived for that reason. You just have to provide enough quality and craftsmanship to best reflect reality. There is going to be a series of aesthetic and language that resonates with someone’s own self-image.

Cherry Creek​​​​​​​ Lifestyle: In a prior interview, you mentioned that you liked to work “on the edge of your rational mind.” What does that mean and how is it portrayed in your artwork?

Deladier Almeida: The idea is to allow the language of painting to be an ally to my interests and to my way of seeing things; and allow an abstraction to what I’m looking at. I may be looking at a tree, but it's more than that. You can’t allow yourself to be too rational with everything. It’s a matter of accepting reality but allowing your own inner reality to come in and make its collection of marks.

Cherry Creek​​​​​​​ Lifestyle: Do you feel as though there is an importance built around the concept of art? How do you feel that it impacts our communities or society on a larger scale?

Deladier Almeida​​​​​​​: ​​​​​​​I think that artists bring attention to aspects of reality that people in their daily, busy lives may not have time to appreciate. In addition to showing people the things that may go unnoticed, we, as in anyone who produces cultural content, are shaping our society by seeing things in a way that it never has. There is room for a more sophisticated, more complex, and more engaged perception of visual reality—an entirely new way of seeing things.

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