Class Act: Artist of Note

Reggie, the yellow Labrador, was seemingly stuck under a glass coffee table at the Lakewood Ranch home of Elliot DeBear.

Or perhaps the dog, who was peering upward through the glass, just wanted a different view of his surroundings, which are populated by DeBear’s many abstract paintings. DeBear looks down unconcerned.

Reggie will find a way out, just like DeBear has. 

During the past three years, Reggie has seen DeBear embrace a new passion with painting, move to a new home in Lakewood Ranch, start a relationship and adapt to the loss of his left leg.

That last one doesn’t get discussed much on DeBear’s turf because he isn’t about to be defined as the man with one leg.

Then again, it’s hard not to notice as DeBear, 70, moves around his home dressed in a tropical-themed shirt and shorts, looking a lot like Jimmy Buffett with a paintbrush. His full head of silver hair presents that distinguished look and hints that buried underneath this newly formed beach dude is a former New York advertising executive, which he was until he moved to Florida four years ago.

In 2017, DeBear developed a complication from peripheral artery disease, which is plaque building up in the arteries and interfering with blood being transported to the limbs. A year later, he had undergone several surgeries, and doctors told him he needed to decide whether they should amputate. He said yes, so he could get on with his life.

That decision led to some changes, and being an avid golfer, he realized a major one immediately.

“I couldn’t play, and I was a single handicap golfer,” he says. “I had to find something else to do.”

So DeBear walked into a Michaels art supply store in 2018 and started buying brushes and paint. He had always liked art but never had the urge to chase it. In his new art world, he understood mobility wasn’t going to be an issue, so he took his materials, went home and started to experiment with styles, shapes and colors.

Living in Sarasota at the time, he also felt he needed a new environment as he ventured into artistic places unknown.

“I looked at Reggie, and we jumped in the car and drove around until we found this place,” he says of his new home at Esplanade at Lakewood Ranch. “It was time for a change.”

His first painting after coming home from the Michaels store didn’t click so well. He painted what he calls a wild landscape.

“It was not good — it was too thick, too exaggerated,” he said. “It was too much of everything. I learned less is more.”

He continued to paint everything from flowers to sunsets before moving into abstract painting, which he describes as learning how to use negative space while creating motion over it.

A key ingredient to finding that motion? Music.

Now, a day doesn’t pass without the sounds of musical artists, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis or Spyro Gyra, filling DeBear’s space. When it comes to art, it influences his mood, his movement and his flow.

He began to name his paintings after his favorite musicians.

He’s got a “Dizzy Gillespie,” a “Miles Davis” and a “Sonny Landreth” painting inspired by Mojo Boogie.

“The music gets my juices going,” he says. “I don’t know what you call it, but it’s emotion, moving stuff around.”

He talks about Miles Davis’ genius in producing fusion music, or the combination of different styles. He had Davis playing while painting one day, and he broke his paint brush. But Davis continued with his smooth sound in the background, so DeBear did too. He painted most of his “Miles Davis” after throwing away the broken brush and using the stump of wood to spread the paint. The work remains one of his personal favorites.

In April 2018, he was invited to exhibit his work at the West Palm Beach Open Show, and things grew from there. His art has been accepted into 11 art shows, including The Big Show National Juried Exhibition at Art Center Sarasota, which was held in July and August.

And it was at Art Center Sarasota that he was reunited with his current partner, Pat Culbertson, whom he had attended junior high with in Livingston, N.J. After seeing his painting in Sarasota, Culbertson looked him up, and they have reconnected over the past year.

“We just jell with our life philosophies, the things we have in common,” she says. “He is a loving, wonderful man who is very kind. I’ve never seen him annoyed, except with his physical pain. Art has been a great outlet for him.”

Culbertson, a retired art teacher who now is creating her own niche in stone sculpture, said she’ll provide the occasional critique to DeBear, who accepts them graciously, but she tries not to interrupt his own creativity.

“People who are formally trained can get into a rut because they know too much, and they overthink things,” she says. “There is a creativity about the way he pushes things. … He has no fear at all. None.”

In this next chapter of his life, defining what he does isn’t important to DeBear. It also isn’t important to him that critics find his work exciting or that he even sells any of his paintings. For him, this chapter is about the creation and the enjoyment it brings.

“I never paint to make other people happy,” he says. “Everyone has different experiences, different tastes, different motivations. I don’t know if it is even possible to paint what people like. I look at it more like, ‘Does it make me happy?’

“It has been an avenue to reestablish myself. It has given me purpose, something to work on.”