Elias Telles Landscape Paintings

"Sunday at the Circus," Folk/Naive Landscape of Circus Scene, Acrylic on Board with Artist's Painted Wood Frame and Brackets, 17 x 29 Inches, by Self-Taught artist Elias Telles. Fifteen years ago, Elias Telles woke from a dream in which an angel holding a lit candle was descending a staircase. The next morning he tore some wood from a dilapidated fence and started painting angels. Elias had already led an adventurous existence before becoming a self-taught painter. Born into a family of 14 siblings in East Los Angeles, he joined the Marine Corps upon graduation from high school and served two years in Vietnam as a rifleman. Once home he unfortunately experienced undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result and discovered the best way to subdue his demons was by producing drawings - that he would quickly destroy. It wasn’t until he was in his late ‘40s that he started to paint. At a local flea market one of his early works caught the attention of a set designer who placed it in a Steve Martin movie and from there his reputation grew: paintings subsequently appeared in a number of other productions which created a Hollywood following and his collectors now include several film directors, work is included in the permanent collection of The House of Blues, and he was one of the featured artists on the PBS series ‘Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations.’ An ex-marine, Telles lives quietly in California without a computer or a cell phone. His tastes lean towards American history and early blues and country music, subjects that frequently appear in his paintings. Soldiers, skeletons and honky-tonk men populate his paintings as do cultural and historical figures such as early minstrel show entertainer Gus Cannon, a ghoulishly-rendered Hank Williams...

"Summer Time," Acrylic on Canvas, Found Wood and Nails Artist Made Frame, 21.5 x 25.5 Inches. Farm scene with folk art/naive qualities by Self-Tajught artist Elias Telles whose p...

"American Whalers", 2019, Acrylic on Found Wood, 14 x 22 Inches. Folk/Naive Art. Marine scene of fishermen and their boats attempting to spear a whale on a ground of green/blue oce...

Born into a family of 14 siblings in East Los Angeles, Elias Telles joined the Marine Corps upon graduation from high school and served two years in Vietnam as a rifleman. Undiagnose...