About

Ilan Leas was born and raised in New York and received a BS from Wake Forest University in North Carolina. His mother was an art teacher and Leas exhibited creativity from an early age. His style emerged in middle school after watching a TV special about crop circles. After that, Leas began drawing intricate designs that incorporated events from his daily life.

Leas devoted his time after graduating from university to building a successful event ticket brokerage. Needing to relax, he began drawing again and reignited his passion for visual arts.

He allows the lines to flow freely to create a dynamic space, with forms emerging from his travels, studies in science, and altered states. He considers his technique patternmaking without a pattern. In 2016, 2017, and 2022 he was selected to create artwork for the Coachella Valley Music Festival’s project “TRASHed” by Global Inheritance. Leas has also created custom artwork for Sweetgreen’s NYC and Chicago locations and collaborated with Jason Wu and Fila China on a Fall 2018 clothing collection.

 From the artist:

My work is a journey through mark making, where each stroke is a spontaneous, intuitive expression of a subconscious flow. With aphantasia, a disposition where the mind lacks the ability to visualize images, my creative process is rooted in the present. I don’t see images in my mind’s eye as I work; there is no visual reference or internal picture to guide me. This absence of mental imagery frees me from premeditated concepts, allowing my art to emerge organically and uniquely. Without planning, I let each mark guide me, channeling primitive lines that resonate with the physical properties of my tools.

The result is a kinetic process, where the energy of each line charges up and determines the next. My marks become a conversation between the subconscious and the physical, guided by the subtle interplay between chaos and harmony, much like nature. Since moving to the desert from NYC, my more precise and sharp graffiti-like strokes have softened to create an organic assemblage of desert shapes, forms and lines, marked in a new desert palette.