STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Large heads on tiny legs flesh out many of David deVillier’s oil paintings.

Putting all that weight on tiny legs is a perfect way of addressing issues like imbalance in one’s life, he says.

“I trace it to my Louisiana Cajun roots and Mardis Gras,” he said. “As a kid, I loved watching the big heads bouncing up and down to Zydeco music in the Maris Gras parade. And I often wondered who was in those big heads—man or woman. I felt that being inside probably gave those people a chance to be or do what they might not have otherwise.”

DeVillier, a native of Opelousas, La., has made Sun Valley his home for more than a decade. And the Yale University graduate has been a featured artist at Gail Severn Gallery for 30 years.

He opened his latest exhibition at the Ketchum gallery, “Mind Gardens and Women Who Know,” this past week.

“Mind Games” offers suggestions at what might be rolling around inside of those big heads from dreams and desires to frustrations and altered realities.

Take the picture of a woman’s tiny leg wearing a high-heeled shoe emanating from a large man’s head, which also contains several birds.

“As I painted, I was trying to imagine what it would be like if a woman was inside a male head. Would she like being there? Would she be trying to escape? Are the birds trying to fly away?” he said.

“As the playwright Eugene Ionesco said, ‘A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.’ ”

Women have been a favorite subject of deVillier’s for years—in part, because he didn’t quite get them, and painting them gives him a chance to mull them over in his mind.

They intrigue him and they set his head spinning as he tries to figure out what makes them tick and why they do the things they do in the way they do.

deVillier’s turned them into iconic symbols painted in acrylic on canvas, finding his interpretation of anatomy far more interesting than the real deal. And he’s often paired them with birds, which also have been a source of fascination for him, to help tell the stories that he conjures in his mind. Circles are a common recurrence in his work representing everything from portals to halos.

“I want the women in my paintings to seem confident and powerful. I like to place them on platforms and pedestals—not to sell them but to salute them,” he said.

“I don’t plan out my paintings. They spontaneously happen. I paint until they make sense as a puzzle or narrative.  Eventually, I come to a point where it’s either time to stop or not.”

One of the dictums deVillier works according to is that famous quote of Dr. Seuss: “Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”

It reminds him to incorporate playfulness into his art.

Art is like opening a box, he added. Some pieces are difficult to get into and some easy. Some are big and some are little.

“My large heads are another kind of box where you can store or collect anything,” he added.

In addition to his paintings, deVillier has created three-dimensional sculptures, or what he sometimes calls two-dimensional sculptures with space. He also learned to draw three-dimensionally.

“It makes you think what’s going on the other side of this head?” he said. “I would encourage anyone to work both ways.”

DeVillier considers himself a storyteller—a storyteller, who tells his stories in paint and sculpture. But he purposely leaves enough sense of mystery to each of his paintings to encourage viewers to figure the meanings out for themselves.

“I try to make people think I’m giving them the answer. But if I give them the answer, that’s where their imagination stops.”

If viewers’ interpretation is different from his, that’s okay.

“That’s what makes artwork interesting—the different interpretations each one of us can come up with,” he said.

DeViller said he hopes those who take a piece of his home, will find that it nurtures them and lets them know the world is not hopeless and not without light.

Then he offered up a piece of art etiquette:

“Even if you look at a piece of art and say, ‘I would never hang that in my house,’ the least you can do is think:  What was the artist trying to say?”