LEROY P. ELIE ARTIST STATEMENT

I grew up with a very imaginative and a colorful vision of what the world was like. At a very young age, I had an ability to draw what I saw and interpret what my imagination saw through my eyes. People have always been a fascination with me and thus I loved to convey imagery of people. My world was always about my surroundings and this is why I have continued to pursue and interpret what I see around me using color for my expression of whatever I do. As a child I was always curious about why in paint class I was taught to paint constrained images with no real expression of color. Landscapes, still lives and other traditional images that were quite boring to me. I continued to experiment with images that I liked.

My art career was put on hold because I wanted to pursue a career that would earn me a living. That side track led me into the world of electronic design where I was able to express myself as a printed circuit board designer, designing circuit boards for the electronic industry. PCB design afforded me the creative outlet to express myself as an artist but in a controlled way by routing interconnects on Mylar using crepe tape as a pattern that created the actual image that was used to make the etched image for the artwork. I’ve done this type of work from the late 60’s to now and what has changed is that all of this creative artwork transitioned to computers and instead of 4 to 6 layers of complex artwork images is now done with up to 35 layers of artwork imagery to produce the electronic printed circuit boards.

By 2011, my sense of direction had changed in my life. I decided to go back to school to pursue a Degree in Art at Portland State University to which I did complete and earned my Fine Arts Degree. All this, while working full time at NVidia Corporation where I worked. I was also caring for the love of my life, my wife, who was battling multiple sclerosis. At my age there have been some challenges but in general this was the best experience of my life. My fellow younger generation co-students inspired me to go in new directions for my artwork of which the pieces I have created since then were a reflection of what I have done up until now. I was basically an abstractionist with a penchant for merging representational images into my abstract creations. Now I want to bring international images such as people, events and social images into my abstract images. I want to continue to do social commentary and more narrative types of work, this I find to be very intriguing. These pieces that you see now are part of what I am currently doing.

Most of my work is done with multiple media because I cannot stand to be limited to anyone medium. Whatever I pickup to draw with or paint with is what I’ll use. If I find a color or medium that may not be mixed by conventional methods, I will use it anyway. To me it’s the creative process that dominates the work, not just the subject or the artist intent. If a final work is achieved by accident then that’s icing on the cake!

I hope that you will enjoy these pieces as much as I enjoyed creating them. There is a lot more coming, I just have to find time to afford to do them.

Leroy P. Elie, Artist

January 19th, 1946 - August 1, 2020