_landscape, surreal, fields, trees, color, purple, blue, green, orange, yellow aerial view, horizontal, Tuscany, vineyard, hill, clouds, Italy, Tuscan, Europe, Italy, Italian, summer, spring, farmland _

BIOGRAPHY

In 1985, at the age of twenty-four, artist **Deladier Almeida** boarded a jet plane in his native São Paulo for a flight destined to change his life. He now describes that flight, his first, as "transformative." On the flight from São Paulo to Miami, Almeida experienced what he remembers as an "epiphany" as he eagerly observed, literally, the lay of the land far below him. He marveled at the human "interaction" with the environment set against the natural environment itself. As his own goals developed, he found tamed nature more suitable to them. He cites geometry as a primary tool and pictorial objective; geometry and architecture are among his main subjects, most evident in his aerial landscapes.

Almeida's landscape paintings reflect a skill and intelligence that allows them to stake out a territory unto themselves, despite the artist's acknowledgment of sources such as Wayne Thiebaud and Roland Petersen, with whom he studied at Davis. Almeida's paintings pivot back and forth between representational art and abstraction. The viewer feels comfort in the familiar rural landscape imagery. No modernist trickery here, but then, a closer look reveals elements that betray a playful mind at work behind the keen observation. The artist confounds his audience, producing a reassuring superficial reality and then shaking it up by digging deeper.

However, perhaps the conceptual drawing involved in his São Paulo studies provided useful background training for his thoughtfully composed and carefully constructed paintings. He has also expressed his preference for "unnatural" landscapes that are manipulated by human design and agricultural prerogatives. (Excerpt taken from "Del Over the Delta" by Paul J. Karlstrom, September 2016 Essay)

ARTIST STATEMENT

"My interest is how to bring a sense of geometric order that serves as a lattice on which I attach these various paint passages and protuberances in the land. So the geometry is largely irrespective of the original scene [as photographed]. But it is where all the painted elements will flesh in."

_Oil on canvas. Gallery wrapped canvas sides painted white. Framing optional. Painting dimensions 30 in (height) x 60 in (width) x 1.5 in (deep) unframed._