Mark DeLura:

For the last few years I have been showing exclusively through one day outdoor pop-up shows here in the Hudson Valley. Most of these shows were of large abstract paintings placed along the edge of a hay field next to Route 22 about halfway between Millerton and Copake, NY. Recently, I also began showing figurative works alongside an unused milking barn nearer to Pine Plains, NY. The figurative works grew out of a loose narrative that seemed to come out of the archetypal idea of a hero’s journey. I have found that where the abstract work is at home within a landscape the figurative work is most at home within an architectural setting. The settings of the pop-up shows have been on or very near roads that are well traveled. The work is seen by a number of people who normally do not interact with contemporary art. The reactions that people have, the questions they ask and the resulting conversations that we enter into are a big part of what these shows are about. Recently, I have expanded this practice by placing my figurative imagery in advertising space that I purchase in the magazine Chronogram and in the classified section of The New York Review of Books.

This way of being with and showing art was something I began doing soon after college, while I was living in Los Angeles. I began painting impromptu imagery, in the middle of the night, on the temporary wood walls that surround construction sites. These works had a short life span because the same walls were always being recovered with posters for movies and musical acts. I also had a studio practice and would show the work from my studio in various nonprofit spaces. I continued this pattern when I moved to New York City. I continued in much the same way when I again moved to the Hudson Valley. In the Hudson Valley I have shown my work at the Re Institute, The Spencertown Academy, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Wassaic Project, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and at a library on the campus of Bard College, Annandale-on- Hudson, NY. In 2005 I participated in the residency program at the Vermont Studio Center and was chosen to participate in the Radius Program through the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2007.

To Contact Mark please email him at markdelura@yahoo.com