Remembering louis delsarte
A spirit chasing rainbows
(september 1, 1944 - May 3, 2020)

A Spirit Chasing Rainbows, The Art of Louis Delsarte
Written by Kevin Sipp for the 2010 Hammonds House Museum exhibition Spirit Chasing Rainbows

There is always a spirit of movement in the art of Louis Delsarte, with colors and compositional elements taking the viewer through worlds that float and balance between magical lyricism and impressionistic social realism. While many find it easy to settle on the beautiful figurative forms in his art, for me the real aesthetic action takes place in the swirling brush strokes, stains, splatters and washes that uphold the figurative elements. Teetering on the void between figurative and abstraction, a Delsarte painting moves the eyes through a spatial carnival of colors that are a hallmark of Delsarte’s mature work, colors and forms that vibrate with almost sentient life on the canvas and paper he has applied them to. From these initial layers, Delsarte coaxes into being figurative elements that emerge like the sunrise from the horizon.  

Delsarte’s sensual depiction of the human form in his work is reminiscent of the works of renaissance masters, and what is captured in the subject matter of his art can be seen as a Diaspora of cultural experiences. We start visually with a black and creole lineage running from Africa, Europe and the Caribbean world. From the roots of these artistic, cultural and spiritual influences we run through the artistic signifiers of the Harlem Renaissance with its classic jazz age idioms and iconography. One can almost hear in the colors of Delsarte’s art, the musical tones of Ellington’s big band coursing through the undercurrents. From there we move into the African American cabarets of Parisian exile, to the 1950’s and 60’s hot civil rights summers of turmoil and the flower drenched 60’s summers of love. How does one reconcile the blues, gospel and jazz with the psychedelic dreams of late sixties Americana and find an unlimited middle path that reaches for the best of both worlds? 

Delsarte’s life as an artist has taken him through the Brooklyn streets of post- Renaissance struggles between  black sustainability and neglect and black power, through college friendships with future cultural innovators such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith to rubbing shoulders with Romare Bearden, Catlett and countless other living legends of American art. The art of Louis Delsarte has always captured the pain, romance and poignant imagination of the American Dream and through that dream a universal language concerning the human condition. When I speak of a spirit chasing rainbows, I speak of my first impression of Delsarte’s art. I speak of a master colorist whose work sings to the eyes as only one who has spent years investigating through deep intentional and improvisational practice can do. Neat categories do not exist to label this work. Delsarte’s art exists as a visual keeper of all our migratory greatness, restless as a late period Coltrane ensemble solo and still moving forward toward a promised land of cosmic unknowns and limitless possibilities.