Meet Robert de Leon: Featured Artist at Field & Found

A Story in Paint, by Caleb Gomez

Robert de Leon has a story for nearly every painting. Sometimes it begins in Santa Fe, sometimes around a chuckwagon, sometimes with a face he has known for years. Before long, the person on the canvas has a name, a voice, and something to say.

At Field & Found, we’re pleased to share his work and introduce the man behind it. Nearly sixty years into painting, Robert still works every day. There is plenty of life in the paintings, and plenty in the man himself.

The Artist Behind the Work

Robert has a warm smile and a way of making people comfortable. He loves showing his paintings. Ask him about one, and you may find yourself well into a story before remembering what your question was.

His life has supplied him with good material: friendships in Santa Fe, days in the South Dakota country, horses, mountain men, and conversations that stayed with him long after everyone went home. Listening to him, the West becomes a place full of acquaintances.

When I asked him what he considers his job as an artist, he gave me an answer that could sit beneath the whole collection:

“Create a story.”

A Lifetime of Painting

Robert began painting in eighth grade. A Spanish teacher bought his first work while he was still in high school. That early sale was the beginning of a practice that would follow him through a working career, years in Santa Fe, and eventually a life devoted to painting.

Santa Fe became an important home. He hosted private viewings, knew the artists around him, and built relationships with people who collected his work. Paintings traveled through galleries, auctions, and private homes while Robert kept making the next one.

Today, he lives in Lewisville, near the Farmers Branch area where he grew up. The studio remains part of every day, with time for golf and the life he enjoys around it.

Materials and Practice

Robert paints primarily in oil on canvas and board, with pencil drawings and palette knife landscapes also part of his work. He frames the paintings himself.

He also reserves the right to keep working on them. A piece can be hanging in the studio and still catch his attention for another adjustment. In Robert’s view, it is not truly finished until it belongs to someone else.

A Story in Paint

A cowboy turns with a rifle in his hand. Riders stop along a ridge. A mountain man rests his gun across his shoulders. Robert catches these figures in moments that suggest a before and an after.

The titles let you in on something. Friend or Foe gives you the question occupying the cowboy. I Still Say He Went to Pecos sounds like an argument that may have been going on for miles.

You can enjoy the scene at a glance, then return and find yourself wondering what happens next.

Composition

What strikes me about Robert’s work is how naturally the eye moves through it. A figure draws you in, a horse turns your attention, and a stretch of country carries you farther. His detail gives you things to discover without losing the shape of the whole painting.

The people have weight. The horses stand on the ground. The distances feel convincing. There is a lifetime of painting behind that ease.

Color and Atmosphere

After the Storm is a personal favorite. The gray sky gives way to fresh color across a Texas landscape, and I can almost smell the rain that has just hit the dirt.

In Texas Blue, bluebonnets spread beneath green oaks. It has the familiarity of a spring drive when you slow down because the field beside the road is too good to pass.

Robert knows how to give a landscape that feeling of recognition. You may never have stood in that exact spot, but something about it comes back to you.

The People Behind the Paintings

There is a story behind Cowboy Sam that I particularly like.

Robert knew Sam during his years in Santa Fe. One day, sitting beside him, Robert reached to move Sam’s hat from the counter.

“You don’t touch another man’s hat.”

Sam made that clear immediately.

The portrait gives us the black hat and the unmistakable mustache. Robert gives us the man who wore them.

His paintings draw from real encounters with cowboys, mountain men, and Native people he has met and photographed. He has sat around chuckwagon meals, heard their stories, and shared his own. He remembers the expressions as well as the occasions.

He once caught a young native girl with painted horses looking toward his camera with unmistakable annoyance. It was a small moment, but exactly the kind that gives a face its character.

Back in the studio, those people and moments become part of Robert’s compositions. He brings together what he saw, what he remembers, and the scene he wants to create.

Paintings That Find Their Place

Robert’s work has reached collectors through galleries, auctions in Santa Fe and Jackson Hole, private dealers, and viewings in homes and estates. He has worked with designers and collectors on paintings intended for particular spaces.

Some of those spaces have had to make room for him.

A Commission on a Different Scale

One painting measured nine feet tall by seven feet wide. Robert worked on it in a game room across the street because he needed the space.

The woman who commissioned it was building a home in the Seattle area and sent him the blueprints. According to Robert, when the painting arrived, she stopped the project to change the setting and lighting around it.

The work had become the center of the home.

It is the sort of story that sounds larger than life until you consider the painting itself: nine feet tall, made by a man who still returns to the studio every morning.

Robert at Field & Found

Robert’s paintings caught my attention. Spending time with him made me want to bring them to more people.

Field & Found represents a selection of his original work, with photographs, painting details, and opportunities to see the pieces in person. We want the presentation to give you a clear look at the work and enough of Robert’s world to make the introduction worthwhile.

The selection includes:

• Western figures and portraits: Cowboy Sam, Friend or Foe, and Northwest Trapper.

• Journeys through open country: Head’n to the North Country and I Still Say He Went to Pecos.

• Texas landscapes: After the Storm and Texas Blue.

How to See and Support Robert’s Work

If something catches your eye, we’d be glad to help you take a closer look.

• Explore the paintings: Robert’s artist page includes photographs, dimensions, materials, and prices.

• Arrange a viewing: Visit Robert’s gallery by appointment, request additional photographs, or arrange a video viewing through Field & Found.

• Share the work: Send a favorite painting to someone who would appreciate it.

• Inquire about a purchase: We can confirm availability and discuss deposit reservations, local delivery, professional hanging, and shipping.

Each listed price includes the pictured frame. A sale receipt and certificate of authenticity accompany the painting.

Final Thoughts

Robert has lived enough stories to fill the walls, and he keeps finding reasons to paint another.

What I appreciate is how readily he shares it all. He takes the work seriously, enjoys the people it brings into his life, and is grateful for the friends and collectors who have stayed with him along the way.

There is still a painting to work on, a round of golf to play, and someone new to meet. That is a good life to find behind a body of work.

Explore Robert de Leon’s selected works, or contact Field & Found to arrange a viewing.