Palette & Chisel Art Academy

Below is our interview with Lenon Delsol, an instructor at Palette & Chisel Art Academy

Lenon Delsol

Photo by Arabella DeLucco

My name is Lenon Delsol and I'm an artist. Palette and Chisel, it's a painting and sculptor club. We're a group of like-minded people [who] get together and do something that they love. Some people are younger, some people are older, but it's a wonderful community and it's one I've been a part of for quite a long time. 

I teach fine art and painting. I love teaching because I have a lot of information and experience in painting and drawing, and if [there’s] something that I did and failed at and overcame, I can tell somebody. That means a lot to me because I would've liked that when I was younger.

Culturally, things [in the United States] seem to move at a different pace. The village I essentially grew up in, it was very small and things moved along very slowly.

When I look back, people here wanted to talk, wanted to engage, and I wasn't used to that. The village I grew up in, we were until 11 or 12 the only black family in that entire place. And, people would look. At first it's disturbing, but then you get used to it. People weren't necessarily rude to you, just that you were different than the usual inhabitants of that village. 

I first started painting when I was a child at school. It was my favorite part of the day. I enjoyed the color and working with paint, but I wasn't a great painter and didn't do anything special. It is just that I enjoyed it. 

I first started doing comic books and that was something I'd always wanted to do when I went to school. I paid close attention in my life drawing classes so I could draw anatomy properly and have them look like human beings or have them look like superheroes.

My mother told me that somebody looked at my hands when I was a child and said, oh yes, the hands of an artist. I think it might have struck something with her because she always wanted to be an artist, and later on in life she did become one. She would draw little things every once in a while and it made me feel good about the idea of being an artist, although I didn't know what it would entail. My mother said you should do what it is that you like to do. I drew my strength from her in that regard. I have no other choice in life, but to be what it is that I am. I was destined to be an artist. 

When you're young, you never think you're gonna live forever, but it turns out that you might be able to, not forever, but certainly closer than you think. And so you need to prepare for that. Whatever you do, make sure that you do it now while you're resilient enough, you can work hard enough.

You should always have a plan. And in painting and drawing, you always have a plan. Really you need to apply that same thing to your life. You visualize it and you carry it out and, and with luck and with some of what you've done, all of those things will come together and you'll be able to live a good life after what it is that you do and have enjoyed doing becomes defunct. 

As an artist, there's only one way you'll retire. Iit's expiration. You'll keep doing it one way or another as long as you can. 

Watch the full interview here: