Joseph A. De Sanze

About the Artist

Joseph De Sanze fell in love with the idea of creating at age nine when his father bought him his first camera. So began his journey in the arts. A native Californian, Joseph loved photographing surfing and began following the sport. In mid 1997, he applied to Savannah College of Art & Design. There he learned the technical aspects of photography. Although photography remained his focus, Joseph also took several classes in painting; he developed a new passion.

Joseph connected with Florida based, “Eastern Surfing Magazine,” where photo editor, Richard Messeroll, mentored him in surfing and how to fully capture the quality of the sport. As the only surfing photographer in Savannah, Joseph developed some amazing relationships among local surfers, and published photos in surfing magazines, surf rags, newspapers, and journals throughout college. He graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and minors in Art History and Painting.

After graduation, Joseph took the plunge and move back to southern California in the hope a job might be waiting for him. After 13+ years, he works in the photo/film industry and occasionally gets to the beach to shoot some surfing.

Joseph began painting as a hobby to relieve stress in his life after moving back to the Los Angeles area. When a friend renovating in an old apartment building gave Joseph several old doors, he decided to create some abstract graphic architectural style paintings. Those paintings sold to a private collector.

Encouraged by the sale, Joseph began painting on canvas again, but he found brushes extremely boring. So, he came up with the intriguing theory that one can paint with many different object. For the next two years, he used cardboard, rocks, sponges, and a turkey boaster to create his abstract paintings. In early 2010, Joseph had the idea to airbrush models to match his paintings, but after several months of trying to match the custom colors he had created, he failed!

After much thought, Joseph developed his new and exciting project, called “Press Art.” He decided to hire female models, paint on their bodies and press canvas against them to create a new style of abstract painting.

At this point, it was all about what paint to use, size of canvas, situation of colors, whether to use paint straight out the container and/or mix new exciting colors. He decided that new colors, more iridescent colors more saturated in pigment produced the desired effect. Joseph called upon several friends and discussed the fine details of what paint to use, whether or not the paint would be harmful to the models skin, canvas size, etc. from many test subjects, he found acrylic paint worked best.

In Oct. 2012, he hired his first model and began work on this series. Joseph only wanted to start with doing 20 1’ x 1’ canvases, but the next thing he knew, he was addicted to his new creation style and it was game on!

Gloria Delson Contemporary Art Gallery