"human experience disguised as abstraction"

1 2

•

I create paintings, collages, and works on paper that explore memory, attention, absence, and the traces we leave behind.

Using layered marks, found materials, language, and image, my work investigates what remains after certainty dissolves. Rather than offering conclusions, I aim to create spaces for reflection—works that invite viewers to slow down, look closely, and arrive at their own understanding.

At its core, my practice is an exploration of presence: a belief that sustained attention is both a creative act and a form of devotion.

my story

works

1 3

Through abstract and conceptual painting and mixed media collage, I build layered surfaces where forms, fragments, and gestures are assembled, buried, and revealed over time. Working through a process of accumulation and excavation, I create space where culture, history, memory and imagination intersect.

Rather than illustrating specific narratives, my work invites interpretation and contemplation, allowing multiple meanings and differing perspectives to coexist.

collage objects

1 4
View all

about

Santino Dela is a Canadian artist and writer whose work seeks to explore time, memory, fragility, impermanence, presence, absence and the sacred inside the ordinary.

Working across painting, collage, and mixed media, he creates layered surfaces that balance concealment and revelation, allowing images, gestures, cultural residue and fragments of meaning to emerge through time. His practice is rooted in attention—to memory, place, ritual, and the quiet transformations that shape a life.

He was born in Vancouver, BC (b. 1990) and now lives and works on a farm in the Fraser Valley with his wife and daughter.