Today we’d like to introduce you to Marcus Delzell.
Hi Marcus, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I have donned the mantle of an artist for as long as I can remember. At the age of three, I was awakened by a torrential and cacophonous thunderstorm. Seeing the blue light from the lightning cast spectral shadows across my bedroom excited my nascent curiosity, and initiated my focus into the primacy of beauty over solace; I recall the decision to move from my bed to a room with many windows because of my fascination with these lightning-cast shadows. Thereafter, I began to view the world with bifurcated lenses, one of the ordinary and the other a fascination with the potential of that which is normally left at face value.
My childhood was spent playing in the sewers and fantasizing about the great big mysterious world. I was frequently suspended from school for spending too much time indulging in these fantasies rather than my schoolwork, or for engaging in one-sided social games to satisfy my boredom. As my faculties developed, I took a liking to theater arts and teaching myself to play musical instruments.
After high school, I attended St. Edward’s University majoring in Theater Arts. During this period, I began to experiment further with my art, exploring painting, filmmaking, silversmithing, and learning to play the organ. When the university forbade me from running for student body president, I staged what could only be called a guerilla art exhibition by transforming the campus overnight with large-scale artworks announcing my entirely fictional candidacy. The fallout was immediate and I was threatened with expulsion, but what emerged from that moment was far more important: a deepened understanding of art as a vehicle for disruption and dialogue. Afterwards, I withdrew from the university to focus on my career as an artist. I published a book of poetry, founded a theater non-profit with the Star Bandit Art Collective in 2023, established a pop-up art gallery, organized a group exhibition last September, and I’ve been painting full-time since April, exploring new subjects and philosophical motifs. I’m not sure what the future has in store for me, but I’m confident that I’ll be carrying that torch lit by a thunderstorm many years ago; I will make art every day of my life until that torch burns through me completely.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I have been graced with the vibrant spark of ADHD, though it carries its own trials. It enables me to have many interests and a relentless stampede of thought every moment of the day; but the animal is difficult to tame and is only ever permitted to sleep outside, unable to fully integrate into the house of the ordinary like all disorderly things. In the past, I’ve been able to blot out the twinkle in my eye for long enough to be considered for traditional jobs, allowing myself to be hired for miserable and passionless careers. These times were frequently accompanied by me haphazardly walking into busy roadways and peeling back the skin above my fingernails before rinsing my hands in salt water, which were among the necessary rituals required to prevent me from remembering the fact that I am an artist and have an artist’s heart. And the moment I became settled in a stable career, the animal outside would awaken and I’d become belligerent and defiant to my superiors, or create games out of a social situations that were very inconvenient for my peers and purely for my own entertainment. I would turn the barren wasteland into an art project in an attempt at survival, burning that career-bridge in the process. The incessant twinkle in my eye reminds me why being an artist is the only thing I’ll ever be able to do. I look both ways before crossing the street now that I’ve embraced who (and why) I am.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My art is expressed primarily through my work as a painter and a dramatist. My artwork creates a metaphoric mirror that reflects the observer’s selfhood under a veil of symbolic language ushering in a state of self-analysis.
I personally experience prosopagnosia, or face blindness; this condition, along with my theatric studies, inspires my work, using masks as simulacra of the psyche’s inner architecture. The mask, both literal and symbolic, is a site where self-concealment and revelation coexist and where artifacts of internal states and residues of thought are made visible. My process is guided by an original method of meditation I call the Metaplanetic Observation Method. It is rooted in the Greek word plané, meaning “wandering,” and represents a cyclical approach where thought and intuition are filtered through deliberate observation. This method allows me to refine fragments of thought into coherent forms, and it is how I begin every one of my compositions.
I paint masked figures in dark, psychologically charged backgrounds to demonstrate the tension between authenticity and performance. I create conditions where perception sees its reflection. The viewer’s encounter with the work becomes a study of their own lived experience, and the simple act of looking becomes an inquiry into the structures of thought itself.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I have a deep fascination with the human body, consciousness, and their processes. I enjoy pushing myself to further explore this curiosity. I remember having vivid dreams of eating food exclusively with my hands every night during a thirty-day fast of only consuming water, which felt illustrative of a subliminal primal consciousness which would never even dream of using a fork and knife. Many years ago, I subjected myself to five days with no food or water, and I remember my eyesight becoming laser sharp and my hearing interfacing more acutely with my consciousness, allowing me to distinctly separate distant sounds to categorize them as “water” and “not water;” every drip from a faucet was like nails on a chalkboard as every fiber of my physical body wanted to thrash out and revolt against my conscious will.
I consider myself a hyperphantasiac in all aspects except for the visualization of faces. I remember introducing myself to new people I’ve met at a dinner party, only for one of those people to say to me “yes, Marcus, we’ve done this four times already.” I suppose an easy way to explain this is that I don’t just see ‘who’ someone is, but also ‘what’ they are and how they fit within the social fabric of my perception. The ‘what’ gives me context so that I can hopefully figure out the ‘who’, and not the other way around (which way I would consider the typical experience of recognition).
This experience feeds my fascination with identity; and also inspires me to create life masks of the people close to me, which I loosely use to inform the shapes of the masks in my artwork. People get a kick out of coming to my residence or studio and seeing their mask on my wall or on a pedestal, otherwise never really able to have a truly autonomous observation of themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.marcusdelzell.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcusdelzell/
