Perspective is everything. Change it just a little and the results can be dramatic. For California-based painter Deladier Almeida, when moving left or right doesn’t achieve the perspective he’s looking for, he goes up, up, up.
The painter—whose idyllic views of California and the Southwest are highly collectible by fans of both Western and contemporary landscape art—has been using height to his advantage to see the land from new perspectives. And every tool is at his disposal, from helicopters and airplanes to small drones that run on a cell phone or tablet. 
Local Flora, oil on canvas, 36 x 36”
“I like the helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, but drones have been really great to work with lately. They fit a niche for me. They aren’t great for fishing [for new subject matter] because of their limited range, but once I find a location I like that I can always send it up to see how the landscape looks,” Almeida says. “What I’m trying to do is look at the region and recombine the elements and reposition them in a context that creates a narrative. I control the view and the path of my gaze, and I do that with graphical punctuation and value distribution—and all of the other pictorial devices available to an artist. Sometimes I’ll even play with the curvature of the horizon to generate physical empathy. I want you to feel the space.”
Inner Squall, oil on canvas, 24 x 18"
Almeida, who was born in Brazil and came to the United States in the 1980s, will be showing his newest collection of paintings at a show opening July 16 at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Almeida’s work has a regionalist quality to it, particularly in the way he exaggerates the form and contour of the land, and yet it is very modern with vibrant color and pleasing compositions. It calls out to both Thomas Hart Benton’s stylized landscapes and Wayne Thiebaud’s delightful color and forms. (The artist studied under Thiebaud.)
Spring Storm, oil on canvas, 20 x 20"
When it comes to his color, these come naturally to the artist. “You never really learn to paint. You only learn to paint the work you’re painting right now. When you accept that, you learn to adapt on the fly. Everything becomes a partnership,” he says. “When working with colors, sometimes you have a key or a bias—maybe cool or warm—but, by and large, when you have a key it allows every mark to inform the next mark, and every color to inform what happens next. You get to a point where you know what will happen next because it’s an organic response.”
Valley Music, oil on canvas, 24 x 48”
For some of his newest Southwest works, some of which will be on view in the Blue Rain show, the artist says he’s drawn to the history of the places he paints, one of which is Abiquiu, New Mexico. “There is lineage in these places,” he adds. “It has power in your work.” —
Upcoming Show
Up to 12 works
July 16-Aug. 7, 2021
Blue Rain Gallery,
544 S. Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501,
(505) 954-9902, www.blueraingallery.com
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