Legacy and Love
Chiara Elie, daughter of artist Leroy Elie, discusses her father’s life and her work to spread his art
By Cassidy Hettesheimer
A man and a young woman wandered around a spacious art gallery, walking slowly, stopping in front of each piece. The young woman looked to the man as he leaned over and pointed towards the painting in front of them, explaining the colors and composition as seen through his eyes. He was quiet, but his words spilled out quickly, excitedly. They were interrupted only once, by a gallery curator, who asked if they were interested in purchasing a piece. Not today, the woman told the curator. Just looking.
It was a common pastime of Chiara Elie and her father, Leroy. No matter where they lived-- and they lived in many different places across the US, over the years-- they would visit art galleries, or art museums, or furniture stores, or small boutique hotels. Chiara would listen to her father hypothesise what the artist must have been thinking, why that one paint stroke, there, looked a certain way. They would talk together, and walk together, and love art together.
Leroy passed away in August of 2020. He was an artist, history enthusiast, life-long student, printed circuit board designer, husband, and father. When he passed away, he left his daughter with not only his love of art, but his art itself-- a collection of his own pieces that Chiara now manages, working to get Leroy’s pieces displayed in galleries and public spaces.
And while spreading his art, Chiara hopes to share her father’s story.
Contemplation
Leroy P. Elie
Acrylic on Canvas
------- The Father
Born in 1946, Leroy Elie grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, part of a Black family during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He was born with polio and, for the first few years of his life, had limited mobility in his legs. Because he often was unable to go outside and play with the neighborhood kids due to his illness, Leroy turned to art as a means of expressing himself, letting his imagination run wild.
“He became very good at expressing [people and life] on paper or on canvas,” Chiara said. ”That's how he was able to escape what he was going through at the time.”
By his teenage years, Leroy had begun his hobby of wandering through art galleries, shows, and museums.
“He felt like he was a little bit isolated from all the other kids,” Chiara said, “because the other kids were into different things. None were really into going to art galleries… so my father was kind of considered, you know, a little bit different [from] others. And that was a little bit of isolation for him. That probably was another inspiration for some of his artwork… the loneliness that he had.”
From a young age, Leroy’s art was colorful, people-centric, and experimental, with a keen eye to the world around him. Even if he felt isolated, he was watching, observing, making note of the people and spaces he passed by.
In his artist statement, Leroy reflected on his early inspirations, writing, “People have always been a fascination with me and thus I loved to convey imagery of people,” and “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,” the latter something he often countered with his “very imaginative and colorful vision of what the world was like.”
As Leroy grew older and started a family-- raising his daughter, Chiara, with his wife, Norma Jean Elie-- he pursued a career as a hardware engineer in printed circuit board design, looking to find a steady income through a job that would still allow him to tap into the same creativity that drove his artistic interests.
“What a printed circuit board designer does, it's very intricate. It's a lot of color in the design,” said Chiara. “So he really, really felt like he was designing something, a whole new canvas, a piece of artwork every day.”
On and off, for years Leroy would go through phases of creating art, then pausing under the demands of a busy life. The isolation of being one of few Black hardware engineers in his field, the events of the world around him, his interest in people-- they brought him back to art as a means of expression, time and time again.
Still, adminst this cycle and his growing body of artwork, something still felt incomplete.
Leroy didn’t want to be considered an amateur “Sunday painter,” as Chiara put it. “He was still very humble, and he really wanted people to take him seriously,” she said. “He wanted to have his credentials behind him.”
And so, at age 66, Leroy enrolled at Portland State University to pursue a fine arts degree.
“I guess you'd call him ‘the old guy’ in the class, but all the kids absolutely loved him,” Chiara recalled. “I actually had the pleasure of going to a class with him when I was visiting one time, and all those kids just really inspired him.”
Even before his enrollment at Portland State, Leroy’s artwork had always been a blend of abstractionism and social commentary, pulling inspiration from the world around him. Yet, Chiara said that Leroy’s interactions with his fellow students motivated him to create even more social commentary pieces. As she put it, the time between 2011 and 2013 was a period in which the work he was creating “was absolutely amazing.”
At the same time that Leroy was attending class in Portland, he was still balancing his full-time job as an engineer. Then, when his wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he was helping two caregivers take care of her.
Every three or four months, Chiara would travel from Phoenix, Arizona, to visit her parents in Portland, where she watched her father paint, work, attend class, and care for her mother.
“It was a very difficult time for us as a family,” Chiara remembered. “[Going back to school] was a little bit of a therapy for [Leroy], because to see his wife go through what she was going through-- such a vibrant woman-- was really tough on my father. Still going back to school was something that just gave him a different outlet.”
After 45 years of marriage with Leroy, Norma Jean passed away.
“They were inseparable,” Chiara said of her parents. “I don't think they could have done anything without each other.”
Leroy didn’t paint for a while, after the passing of his wife. “I think he was just really depressed,” Chiara remarked. Three years ago, when Leroy himself began falling ill with “everything under the sun but cancer, unfortunately,” as Chiara put it, he moved to Phoenix to live with his daughter.
And he began painting again.
Leroy would go through a day of dialysis as part of his medical treatments, then come home and, even in pain, would paint, finding solace, strength, and escapism in his long-time passion that had now become his full focus.
Knowing that his time left with his daughter was limited, Leroy painted and painted, telling Chiara that he wanted her to have a full body of art when he passed.
“That just meant the world to me, for him to be as sick as he was and he still was painting, [to] do the best that he could for me… It feels sad that he's gone, but he left me with so much,” said Chiara, gratitude and emotion strong in her voice.
At the end of his website’s artist statement, Leroy closed with, “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 left Chiara with his love, and his art.
The Last Dance
Leroy P. Elie (2020)
Acrylic on Canvas
------- The Art
“I want to continue to do social commentary and more narrative types of work-- this I find to be very intriguing,” Leroy once wrote.
In his artist statement, written after graduating from Portland State, Leroy continued, “[In the past], 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.”
His art blends abstract styles with strikingly relevant social commentary, using bright colors and bold figures to draw in its viewers to the gaze of a piece’s subjects. In the latter art-dominated years of his life, Leroy’s abstractionism concentrated into poignant meaning.
Shaped by the stories of underrepresented communities and his own experiences as a Black man, Leroy aimed to represent people of color and Black and African people in his work. As someone who loved watching the History Channel and learning about history and culture, Leroy often created art with elements of African, American, and African-American history, commenting on and recognizing the current experiences of Black and African-American people.
“When he was younger... he felt like he was not represented [in art and art school], and I'm not talking about just Black people, I'm talking about people of color of all different nationalities,” Chiara said of her father. “He wanted to always make sure those people were represented.”
As to how he created such art-- the colors of Leroy’s work are often bright and bold, paired together in unique combinations. Leroy loved bright oranges and reds, metallics, and strong primary colors.
“People of color, we're all different shades. You know, I think that's what he was expressing through his art... different shades of people,” Chiara said. “That's what I think [it] is so bright... Even if he was painting something that was sad, he still made sure [there] was something bright in that painting to make it more vibrant, and… give it a lot of life.”
As an artist, Leroy never shied away from tapping into multiple different mediums to create a piece of art.
“I cannot stand to be limited to any one medium,” states Leroy’s website. “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.”
Full of bright yellows, blues, greens, and oranges, Chiara’s favorite piece, “From Africa to America: the Sisters” features three African women's faces, side by side, staring out of the painting with wide eyes. Eyes and faces often feature prominently in Leroy’s art.
From Africa to America: The Sisters, Leroy P. Elie
“I remember the very first time I saw this painting,” remembered Chiara. “It brought so much emotion in me. I was visiting my parents in Portland, and my dad had just produced it and was sitting in the kitchen… I'm coming up stairs and in the kitchen I see that painting. I couldn't take my eyes off it. That's what I love about it-- three women and three African women and the eyes of those women are so powerful. You can walk around the room and feel like they’re following you.”
Chiara favors this painting when creating promotional materials for Leroy’s art.
“From Africa to America: the Sisters,” along with other pieces like “Black Brilliance,” “Generations,” and “Contemplation”-- they capture the vibrancy, intensity, and color of much of Leroy’s art.
“He wanted people to have a certain amount of vibrant energy,” Chiara said. “When you see his pieces… you get so much emotion from the eyes or from the faces that you see. And you just want to give someone that kind of a feeling that he had when he was creating that painting.”
Black Brilliance, Leroy P. Elie
Generations, Leroy P. Elie
------- The Daughter
Chiara looks at the nearby paintings from Leroy’s collection. Some reside in a gallery in Phoenix, others in her home. She sits in front of several now, in the new gallery space, explaining the meaning and inspiration behind each.
Chiara herself might not have picked up painting in particular, but after years of wandering around art galleries with her father, she inherited his eye for color and design. With a background in fashion merchandising and experience in sales and residential property management, she felt drawn to putting her skills towards helping spread and distribute her father’s work. She stepped into the role of being Leroy’s art manager and art dealer, and she began reaching out into her community.
“I knew I found a new purpose in life, which was to make sure the entire world saw what my father was as an artist… I knew he was very talented. I just felt like the world hadn’t seen his talent yet.”
Her now-mentor Dale Phillips was able to help Chiara secure her first art space, and eventually she worked to book a gallery space in downtown Phoenix to showcase Leroy’s art.
She was also recently approached by Bar Napkin, a company looking to put several of Leroy’s paintings in the VIP suites area of State Farm Stadium, where the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals play. Now, a four-painting installation of Leroy’s work hangs in the club-level lounge in the stadium. In Mid-August, Chiara toured the new installation for the first time.
Chiara Elie presents the new gallery of Leroy’s art work in the Arizona Cardinals Stadium in Phoenix, Arizona.
“I'm super excited,” Chiara said of the opportunity. “I wish my father would have seen this.”
Looking forward, Chiara has her goals set on finding and booking more spaces to display Leroy’s work: in galleries, in fashion shows, in the types of boutique hotels that the father-daughter pair used to spend afternoons wandering through. She also is aiming to get prints and reproductions of her father’s work sold through retail companies like Target and home decor store Z Gallerie.
“A reason why I say Z Gallerie is because that's one of my favorite stores, and my dad’s. We used to love going there,” said Chiara. “So that would be the most amazing dream to have my father's artwork in a place like Z Gallerie.”
When people encounter Leroy’s work-- while cheering on the Cardinals, while spending a day in downtown Phoenix, when looking for art to put in their homes or in their hotels-- Chiara hopes that they’ll see the strength and vibrance with which Leroy lived.
“When people see pieces of my father's work, I want them to feel the emotion that he had when he was creating the piece,” said Chiara. “I want people to smile.”
And she smiles bittersweetly now, thinking of her past week. In honor of the one-year anniversary of her father’s passing, she visited the Phoenix Art Museum and the FOUND:RE Hotel. An eight-minute walk from the art museum, the FOUND:RE Hotel is filled with its own art and was one of the places that Chiara and her father liked to visit.
Chiara hopes that, one day, Leroy’s work will hang on the walls of the hotel, next to the art that the pair discussed on their treasured art tours through downtown. She’s in talks with the hotel now.
“When we would walk around the gallery… I used to tell my dad, ‘I don't know how we're going to get your work in here, but we're going to get your work in here,’ and my dad [would say] ‘I know you'll figure it out’... And I'm figuring it out. I'm going to definitely have his work in the gallery at the hotel. That's my next goal.”
In Loving Memory of Artist, Leroy P. Elie
January 19th, 1946 - August 1st, 2020
