As Christopher de Leon steps onto the 38, he quickly flashes his Muni pass at the driver and searches for an empty seat. He walks toward the back of the bus and pulls out a pen and his Moleskin. Quickly he glances through the adjacent windows and begins to scan the view of the city outside. Subconsciously he starts to analyze every object that passes his view. From old rusty buildings to fire hydrants to people walking down the streets, de Leon finds himself in the middle of a thought process prologue to creation.

Stop after stop, de Leon sketches the first image that manifests his mind repeatedly adding details throughout the bus ride. Never seeking to erase until his time on the bus has exhausted. Similar to free writing, de Leon sketches on the fly filtering his ideas all over his canvas until reaching destination. At the end of his route what once was a blank page is now covered in sketches of a female aesthetic to his imagination.

Often inspired by imperfections, this 26-year old artist finds beauty in those tarnished. “Urban decay [and] anything with little bits of rust coming through. Little imperfections like that” is a visual de Leon keeps in mind when painting. Utilizing a mellow color pallet and paying attention to intricate details, he is an artist often known for his signature robotic-female looking pieces. What I’ve been hearing lately is a ‘de Leon girl.’ The way I draw my females, I sometimes draw them as female robots,” he said. “I’ve always loved the female form. I think they’re always elongated and graceful looking, but strong.”

From the sights of de Leon’s pieces it’s evident he’s distinguished a style that collides his fascination with the imperfections of authentic objects with the beauty of the female form. He’s produced a progressive style that showcases different realms of his interpretations through various mediums. From wood burning to sculpting to painting to sketching, de Leon creates from the heart in liberation of his mind. And sometimes unknowingly he creates themes among his work.

Last year, de Leon implemented a heart into each of his robotic pieces supplying every one of his paintings with the shape. And when asked if there was meaning behind that action, he reassured me most of his pieces don’t have a deep meaning upon its initial creation. “I analyze it later on and if I get something out of it then that’s good. But usually I just paint.” For de Leon, there’s no blueprint to his work or any prior sketches needed, he simply paints off impulse and allows each of his projects to come alive at their own pace never jumping forward of the visual before him.

However, it’s been heard that his audiences have viewed his work in ways he’s never interpreted before. An individual told him his work conveys positive messages. “

She told me: ‘No matter how worn out, torn or scarred up my subject matter is, [usually] there’s always some sort of glimmer of life in between.’” de Leon said. “She doesn’t know how it conveys to me personally though, but that’s usually what people see from my work. Something like there’s ‘life after death’ in my pieces.”

Now however you choose to see his work, this artist leaves that notion up to you. He likes to leave the door open for his viewers to interpret their own when they first see his work. He appreciates a viewer’s individual understanding of his paintings and embraces both positive and negative comments from onlookers. He feels that with any reaction taken he’s been rewarded with the attention from another being. “If I can get someone to stop and admire a piece, to take a second or two out of their day I’ve done my job. Even if I got someone to talk shit or admire my piece, I still feel accomplished to get someone’s attention.”

de Leon says he is just doing what he loves and is trying to stay alive while doing it. As a student of his craft for about 6 years on-and-off, de Leon has progressed into an artist he’s always dreamed of becoming. “I’ve become an efficient painter now. And my paintings have definitely got more intense and more solid. The style is coming more into itself and my technique has gotten a lot better and tighter.”

What just started as him painting in his homemade studio, he has now transformed into an artist in high demand at local venues and galleries all over the Bay Area. Now doing live art shows on a regular basis, de Leon is reaching more attention from curators and other artists. In 2009, he had a show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, as he was elected as one of the first painters to ever paint on the museum walls. In front of a crowd of approximately 400-500 people there de Leon stood for two and a half hours painting on the huge canvas de Young provided – an action he never dreamed up till that day. And in that year alone, he was doing an average of 2-3 shows a month, but now he’s found himself coming off the month of January with a personal record of nine shows proving that with this kind of momentum de Leon is on his way to making a name for himself.

But along with live art comes another factor in de Leon’s life. While his initial focus was to hone his craft to begin with, de Leon has branched out and found another way for him to outlet his creativity.

Just this month, he’s been chosen to help teach and facilitate an art class at the Filipino Community Center in the Excelsior District in San Francisco. Every Friday you can catch him interacting with the community interested in pursuing art. Now taking aspiring artists of all ages, he finds this as an opportunity to share his knowledge with folks by engaging them in techniques he’s developed over the years.

So when I found out he was teaching, I urged myself to ask him for advice on painting. This is what he said:

“Just keep rhythm… flow and simple.”

That’s it. Words he originally recognizes as his motto, but words I now recognize through the fluid motion of his art.
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