Though Asheville artist Philip DeAngelo’s work is typically divided by bold horizon lines based on the Golden Ratio, an ideological and mathematical proportion that’s been a mainstay in aesthetic theories for hundreds of years, he says he wasn’t always aware how that mystical ratio guided his creative work. “I was painting that way already,” DeAngelo says. “It just seemed natural to me.”
Natural is a good word for the artist. On a recent fall visit to his gallery in the Wedge building, garage doors opened to let in light, air and passersby. Border collie Scout hung out in the back, taking in the late-afternoon sun from the space’s large windows. DeAngelo’s wife of 24 years, Tina, trains sheep dogs – she’s recently helped teach a canine to wrangle ready-to-milk goats from the field for local dairy Spinning Spider Creamery. The couple has four dogs of their own, and Scout reacts gently to the gallery’s visitors.
Two browsers happened in and were immediately taken with DeAngelo’s work. “It’s the uniqueness of the lines,” says Rich Dunn, who with his wife, Meghan, was visiting Asheville from New Jersey. “That’s one of the things that drew me in.” And the texture in DeAngelo’s painting reminds him of the Telecaster guitars he favors, made from swamp ash. The two end up buying a work DeAngelo has painted on a piece of pressed-tin ceiling, one of the last scraps he had acquired from a downtown building.
Scrap metal, unfinished wood, Masonite, fabric, cork and tin ceiling tiles are among the variety of items DeAngelo uses. When creating textures, he builds up surfaces with gesso, thick paint and bold brush strokes. “Everything for me starts with texture,” DeAngelo says. “If I don’t find it, I’ll create it.”
In “Appalachian Elemental,” DeAngelo affixed a pressed-tin tile to part of the painting. With the exception of a slight patina, the tile remains whole and unmarked. The found material enriches the texture and adds an historical element. He draws from a visual legacy and abstractly repurposes the tile. “I like knowing that it already has a history,” he says. “It’s a jumping-off point.”
DeAngelo’s own history is one of finding a similarly appropriate niche — one that suits his work and his thirst for community.
He and his wife, Tina, moved to Asheville in 2008 from Ocean City, N.J. He’d lived in that coastal town his whole life, devoting his time to surfing, curating a festival of surf art, music and films and operating an art gallery. His work then focused on themes of water: wetlands, breaking waves and the like, he says. But after a vacation to Asheville, neither one could get the city out of their heads.
“We absolutely fell in love,” he says. The couple took the leap, closed their gallery and sold the farm Philip also owned. They moved down, and “within two months, we felt more a part of an area than we ever had in our lives,” he says.
It took about six months for his work to reflect the environment here, rather than the coastal scenes he’d painted before. “Now the mountains are my muse,” he says.
In Ocean City, managing the gallery left little time for painting. And what time he had was typically spent poring over canvases in a private studio space. It was an environment that seldom involved patron interaction and dialogue. “I’m not a solitary artist,” DeAngelo says.
This rings true if one ventures into his space and finds him chatting with friends and patrons who stop in. DeAngelo offers everyone something to drink, and shares his love for the town with enthusiasm.
“I don’t have a lot of angst,” he says with a smile. “Joy is my huge statement. I can’t believe I get to do what I do, and people support it.”
Recent commissions for Mission Hospital, and more in the works, are evidence.
DeAngelo’s been in the Wedge Building since 2008, moving last year from the second floor to his current street-front studio and gallery. Along with the North Carolina mountains, the artist finds inspiration in his street-level environs: the artists, the visitors, the hum and crackle of the streets.
“I grew up on the water,” he says. “Now I have new water.”
Check out DeAngelo’s work and the Broken Road Studio, open Monday through Saturday from 10am to 4pm and located in the Wedge building at 115 Roberts Street in Asheville’s River Arts District. brokenroadstudio.artspan.com