Delvin Lugo wore many hats before becoming a figurative painter. He grew up surrounded by fabric and clothing—his parents were both tailors—and vibrant, neon houses in the Dominican Republic, where he was born and raised. “I consider fabric to be my first artistic medium,” he says, “because as soon as I could hold a needle and use a sewing machine, I was constructing things, making Barbie’s clothes and things like that.” When he was 12 years old, his family moved to Rhode Island, where he began to consider attending art school. Fast-forward a few years, and after two years of studying painting at the Maine College of Art, he transferred to the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he graduated with a degree in cinema. For a while, he worked on film sets before becoming a fashion stylist for celebrities. But something still didn’t feel quite right. “I kept feeling like, I just want to tell my own story, and for me, painting was the medium where I could really express myself,” Lugo says. “In film, you’re working with a team of 100. A painting is truly just me in the studio.” For the past three years, Lugo has combined his love of painting with his textile roots by creating self-portraits in oil on vintage household linens. Now, he is an Aim Fellow at the Bronx Museum of Art, and part of a group exhibition in which his first installation piece, Country to City/Town to City, tells the story of his life. This piece, and his other recent paintings, highlight the importance of chosen family, home, and belonging within the LGBTQ+ community.
Sunday Afternoon, 2023, oil on found vintage embroidered tablecloth, 52 x 38 x 3 inches. (Photo courtesy of the artist.)
In the center of Lugo’s installation sits a table draped with a painted tablecloth, each side depicting one of the places he’s lived plus a small self-portrait. Lugo sifted through old family photos to find reference pictures of himself for the portraits sparking a cathartic reflection on the years it took to come into his own identity. “It was about reclaiming my story of growing up as a queer gay child in Dominican Republic,” he says, “and switching the story to empowerment.” Though his paintings are deeply personal, Lugo says viewers have come up to him to tell him how his story has resonated with them. “These are my stories and my life,” Lugo says, “but of course, a lot of us also go through the same thing.”
