Greg DeLiso Makes a Piece of Art

Directed by Douglas Burgdorff
North Hollywood, CA 10/25/24
Special thanks to Matthew TC
Learn more about Greg’s story and his art: www.etsy.com/s...
IG: @gregorydelisoart
I draw because of my grandpa and my wife - both of whom, tragically are together somewhere else in time. My grandpa died in 2009 at age 79. He could draw. My grandpa, Tom Easton, saw Fantasia in the theater when it came out in 1940 - it inspired him to become an artist. I saw Jurassic Park in the theater when it came out in 1993 and it had the same effect - I needed to become a filmmaker. My grandpa showed me a lot of movies, from Tremors to Plan 9 From Outer Space. And, he drew me a lot of pictures. Dinosaurs and spaceships. Sometimes he would outline and I would color. I wish I had any of these to show. But, like many things they have been lost.
I enjoyed drawing as a kid, but who didn’t? I took these good memories for granted at the time but I look back on my first education in art with the magic they deserve.
By age 10 I had stopped drawing though. I started making movies a few years later and never thought about drawing again. I never thought of it as something I could do.
In 2014 I met Chelsea Fleetham on OKcupid. We fell in love very quickly. We got each other and made each other laugh. Chelsea was disabled, neuropathy had left her joints locked.
We were married for 5 years until her passing from sepsis on January 3rd, 2019. We were both 32 at the time.
Grief is the most complicated emotion we have. And, needless to say, my life was completely destroyed. Chelsea was my best friend and a bright, shining, endlessly intelligent and beautiful person.
Chelsea didn’t like art. Haha typing that sounds wrong. But, she was so without pretension she didn’t have time for taste in art. Chelsea was a lawyer that passed the BAR in Michigan on her first try, all while being horrifically disabled.
But, when we were decorating our house, Chelsea bought a Kandinsky print of a painting called Circles. Chelsea liked “colors and shapes.”
A year after Chelsea passed I had my first panic attack and had to call 911, thinking I was having a heart attack. I had developed PTSD and the attacks started getting more frequent. This coincided with the first Covid shutdowns and all of a sudden my life, along with all of us, became even smaller.
I was on the phone with my therapist and she suggested getting a coloring book. It never would have occurred to me. But, something clicked so I went and got one right after the call. The first step was coloring outside the lines. After a couple weeks of that I felt ready to start on a blank piece of paper. That’s how all of this began.
I draw during panic attacks. Not always. But, sometimes. Sometimes I can tell by looking at them. These drawings are basically “improvised.” I don’t start with a plan or any preconceived ideas. I just go. It’s therapy. There’s no rules. This process is a tool to help me process feeling of anxiety, panic, depression, grief.
I realize that all sounds pretty dark. But, it helps! That’s the benefit of art therapy, channeling those feelings into something tactile and active. I think it’s a very beautiful thing that each drawing is literally a recording of my emotions, live as they happen. Like stenographs of my brain or something.
I hope that this story gives some context to these drawings. They aren’t just pieces of paper, but little pieces of my emotions recorded into the physical.
I tell this story to encourage others to try art therapy. I thought I couldn’t draw. You don’t have to know how to draw to draw! That’s why coloring books have lines. Just color them in. Or, veer off and do your own thing. It’s about processing the noise in your head through a filter that reorganizes it into something manageable. And afterwards you get to look at what you have accomplished.
Thank you for listening to my story and looking at my work.