Meet Delano
Delano Ard
A native of Savannah, Georgia, Delano had a flair for creativity at an early age. “As a child of the 70’s, I grew up with a big box of sidewalk chalk as my palette, my grandmother’s driveway as my canvas, the colorful world of Savannah as my inspiration, and a rebellious fire in my soul.”
At the age of 13, he sold charcoal sketches to friends and family while he pursued a career as a paperboy and thus his love for art and business blossomed – two very different worlds bound to influence and inspire his future work. Delano graduated from Georgia Southern University in 1984 with a B.S. in Technology and minors in Marketing and Advertising. Over the next 30 years, he chose the traditional path focusing on raising two boys and building his printing and marketing business while winning numerous professional awards and accolades. Pushing aside his passion for art, he used his career as a creative outlet. But it could only stay restrained for so long.
After 30 years of living inside the lines, Delano felt the need to push himself, to get outside of his comfort zone, to reclaim the passion for life he once felt as a kid. With that, he dug out his paint brushes from 30 years before and reemerged into the world as a self-taught artist. Today, he plays in acrylic, charcoal, pen and ink, pastels, watercolors and oils. His credentials are intuition, observation, perseverance, pure passion and drive. The years of printing and marketing for Fortune 500 companies coupled with his love for color and texture has provided him with an instinctual ability to attach emotion, passion and playfulness to his work. He sees. He feels. He dreams. He paints.
Having established himself as an artist in his beloved hometown of Savannah, Delano has created a world of his own – a world he yearns to share with others. Delano gives each painting a personality and character of its own while telling a story that dances in the mind of the viewer. Whimsical. Playful. Humorous. Compelling. Delano’s art opens a window to the soul revealing the hippie rebel in all of us.