‘A Retrospective 1986-2026’ traces Dell’Isola’s artistic evolution
By Ron Rocky Coloma
A 40-year retrospective of Guam-based artist Mark Dell’Isola is doing more than looking backward. It shows how decades spent observing reefs, typhoons, tides and other forces of nature across the Pacific continue to shape his work as he turns toward one of his newest subjects: technology.
“Mark Dell’Isola: A Retrospective 1986-2026” traces the evolution of Dell’Isola’s work from early landscapes through paintings inspired by underwater environments, astronomy, the Mariana Trench, DNA, optical effects and the places he has lived.
For Dell’Isola, however, the exhibition is less an endpoint than a record of a career that is still evolving. “My journey is still going on,” he said. “I got things I want to try to do now.”
His latest work brings together two subjects that might initially seem at odds: the organic environment of the Pacific and the circuitry, pixels and precision of the technological world.
Dell’Isola is working with pixel-based compositions and studying circuitry and integrated circuits as he considers how technological forms can fit into the visual language he has developed over four decades.
“Now the work I’m doing is the hardest because I’m trying to marry my style with technology, and not just technology, but circuitry, integrated circuits,” he said.
That tension between technology and nature has become particularly relevant to Dell’Isola as artificial intelligence and other technologies increasingly become part of everyday life.
“How do we deal with technology and AI in our natural environment? You have to realize that the natural environment comes first because something could come and wipe us out,” he said.
Dell’Isola pointed to Guam’s experience with typhoons as an example of how quickly technology and modern conveniences can become secondary to basic necessities.
“Soon, one comes back where we’re worrying about where we’re going to get water. We don’t have any power,” he said.
That relationship with nature stretches back to the development of Dell’Isola’s recognizable style.
An early landscape painting from 1984 predates the period covered by the retrospective and, according to Dell’Isola, comes from before he had developed a style of his own. A major shift came after he lived in Palau’s Rock Islands and began diving.
Instead of realistically painting individual fish and coral, Dell’Isola sought to convey the experience of being underwater through abstraction.
“I tried to develop this style so I could represent the underwater without painting each individual fish because it would take me forever,” he said.
He began dripping paint, allowing it to run across canvases and developing a liquid quality that drew from his experiences diving.
“I’m looking above, almost floating above it,” Dell’Isola said. “That was developed so much from diving and being involved in the liquid world, and painting is a liquid form. So they’re married together.”
Life in Palau also changed how he observed the natural world. Without the conveniences that ordinarily structure daily life, he learned to work around conditions he could not control. “The rhythms of nature dictate your movements,” he said.
Dell’Isola lived about 25 miles by boat from Koror and initially stayed in a fisherman’s hut that he later rebuilt into a larger structure and studio.
Dell’Isola said exposure to artists and art history could feel overwhelming because of the pressure to respond to established figures and movements. Instead, Palau gave him the opportunity to focus primarily on his surroundings.
“The best thing I ever did was to come back to my roots here, and then from Guam, go out to Palau, which is even more separated, to be able to discover yourself because you didn’t have that pressure of all of that history pushing down on you,” he said.
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Paintings from different periods incorporate circles, squares, globes and double-helix forms. One series was influenced by astronomy and black holes, subjects Dell’Isola studied through textbooks while living without electricity or television in the Rock Islands.
Another series explored optical effects. A 2014 work based on the intensity of sunlight uses circular forms and the light spectrum to create a deliberately intense visual experience.
In Japan, limited working space led him to create smaller landscape paintings that represent mountains, rocks, water, and the sea using his existing visual language. His years in Bali produced another body of work incorporating elements he encountered there.
A series based on the Mariana Trench depicts it as a break in the Earth, alongside Guam, the ocean, and the sky. Dell’Isola said themes are often unplanned; they begin when something catches his attention and gives him an idea to explore. “It's something that's just intuitive that hits me,” he said.
His current technology series is expected to continue into next year, when Dell’Isola said he plans to present the work at an exhibition in Florida outside Miami. “I don’t know what that theme will be, but things move on,” he said, “like your life moves on.”
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Dell’Isola’s work is held in permanent collections at the Smithsonian Institution, Belau National Museum, Iber Caja Cultural Center in Spain, A.B. Won Pat Guam International Airport, Guam Supreme Court, Guam legislature and University of Guam. He has had exhibitions in New York, Washington, Spain and Japan.
Dell’Isola’s studio at Sagån Kotturan Chamoru Cultural Center in Ypao Point gives him a place to spend hours painting and developing new ideas.
After decades living in the region, he said he no longer sees that distance as a disadvantage.
“I understand my place because before I used to say, ‘Oh man, we’re insignificant out here,’” Dell’Isola said. “Now I realize, well, no, we’re on the cutting edge out here.”
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