Celluloid Subway Painting

Ilan Leas was born and raised in New York and received a BS from Wake Forest University in North Carolina. His mother was an art teacher and Leas exhibited creativity from an early age. His style emerged in middle school after watching a TV special about crop circles. After that, Leas began drawing intricate designs that incorporated events from his daily life. Leas devoted his time after graduating from university to building a successful event ticket brokerage. Needing to relax, he began drawing again and reignited his passion for visual arts. Though he began with pen and ink drawings, he has evolved to exploring other media such as painting on unconventional surfaces. He uses graffiti-like strokes and harsh angles to create the organized chaos of each drawing. Leas’ current work relies on his subconscious and he does not plan any of his drawings beforehand. He allows the lines to flow freely to create a dynamic space, with forms emerging from his travels, studies in biology, and altered states. He considers his technique “patternmaking without a pattern.” In 2016, 2017, and 2022 he was commissioned to create artwork for the Coachella Valley Music Festival’s project “TRASHed” by Global Inheritance. Leas has also created custom artwork for Sweetgreen’s NYC and Chicago locations and collaborated with Jason Wu and Fila China on a Fall 2018 clothing collection. From the artist: Having aphantasia, I lack a mind's eye and am unable to visualize. I absorb all that I see, but am unable to visually draw on it and oftentimes even describe it, yet the influences manage to emerge in my art as I fill the space. In doing so, my designs develop in a unique way. Since moving to the desert from NYC, my more precise and sharp graffiti-like strokes have softened to create an organic assemblage of desert shapes, forms and lines, marked in a new desert palette.