Leon Middleton has hardened himself against the miseries of life. Yet his demeanor is soft and kind. At 57, he often wears a smile on his weather-beaten face and his eyes radiate an incontrovertible wisdom from deep within. It is a wisdom he found first in God and then in art.

Middleton is not your ordinary suffering artist. Fate has been particularly cruel to him. In 1969 he sustained a debilitating leg injury. His relationships have all failed. On top of that, he’s been homeless for 15 years. As severe and undeserved as his misfortunes may be, he endures them with equanimity. What’s more, he creates such overwhelmingly life-affirming art that one can’t help but think: here is a strong soul. 

Leon’s paintings bear only scant testimony to his hardships. Instead, they speak of peace and joy. Leon doesn’t wait for a better future. He simply creates that future, right here and now, in his art. “One way to get what I want is to paint it,” he says. Leon visualizes an ideal world, a sanctuary of love, free from want and pain, where all his needs have been gratified. This painted world is no delusion, he claims. He actually lives in it. It’s as real to him as the persistent agony in his right leg. 

No matter how impossible his landscapes, how misshapen his figures or how crude his technique, Middleton crafts his vision with so much conviction and unaffected honesty, that it does indeed ring absolutely true. The viewer certainly buys it, in both senses of the word. Almost all of his 120 canvases have been sold. 

An individualist through and through, Leon inevitably paints like no-one else. His style is delightfully childlike yet at the same time sexy. And the contradictions abound. Calm fields of solid color are disrupted by short, nervous brush strokes. Warm earth tones clash with lurid hues. The biggest paradox is that Middleton’s naive imagery carries such potent symbolism.

Leon’s favorite subject is the female figure. There is usually one in each painting. In conversation, he refers to his painted women in the singular. “She is something that breathes and has life. She’s the mother of life.” He does not mean any specific woman but rather the archetypal woman and he unabashedly declares his love for her. He seeks her pleasures, her comfort, her companionship. “Gracious!” he exclaims, “I want her, I need her. If I can get my own woman, then I have no worries. A woman is just like a flower, a wildflower. She’s beautiful.” 

In his art Leon does glorious justice to female beauty. Granted, his is a very singular aesthetic, but it is no less alluring. He believes an artist’s responsibility is to cherish and to beautify. Typically, he begins his compositions with the figure, which he often adorns with flowers. These flowers might grow into trees. These, in turn, attract songbirds, who watch over all the other animals, which he depicts with increasing abstraction. Before long, Leon has populated his entire canvas with a multitude of unidentifiable life forms, all in apparent harmony. 

Middleton’s signature motif is the rayed sun. He either places it in one of the top corners or mischievously incorporates it into his figures' rear ends. “Putting the sun on the butt let’s you know it’s hot. It lets you feel the burn. It shows that the woman is glowing and beautiful.” This is at once erotic and sacrilegious, given that Leon’s sun represents both the masculine principle as well as God, the father. The sun is the source of Leon’s strength. “During the day, it shines down on me. It gives me power, it makes me a man.  At night, when I sleep outside, under the Tree of Life, it glows inside me. I carry it in me all the time.”

Another recurring theme is the house, Leon’s house. It represents a sense of home and belonging, a shelter from the harsh realities in the streets and perhaps from the downpours, floods and other cataclysms that occasionally make it into his paintings. “My house is something that I never owned but always had," Leon says with a smile of gratitude. "It’s the righteous house, the house of warmth. God said, ‘It’s yours, claim it!’ And I laid my hands upon it and painted it."

In his world of fulfilled desires, Leon hasn’t claimed more than his fair share. He doesn’t want it all, just enough to lead a dignified existence. He’s content with the bare necessities of life. In the end, Leon’s paintings are nothing less than an explanation of life: there's a mother, a father and their progeny, seeking to survive and multiply. Leon conveys his message in the simplest possible terms. It is understandable, believable and deeply moving.

As poignant as Middleton’s art is his life story. Born in Wauchula, Florida, he moved to the Gulf Coast as a boy. At age 16 he got into a horrific accident. A garbage truck ran him over, breaking his right leg. “I tried to stand up immediately,” he recalls, “but when I put my weight on my leg, it fell apart. The bone stuck right out.” Three weeks later he was able to walk again, albeit with a cane, on which he still depends. The fracture has never properly healed and still festers to this day. “It takes a strong man to pull through the pain. I ain’t determined to let that leg get me down. In my state of mind I ain’t got no suffering. When I give up, that’s when I’ll suffer.”

In defiance of his handicap, Leon developed a flair for dancing. Strangely, he also became a truck driver. He held numerous other low-wage jobs, from yard worker to repairman, as he moved from Nokomis to Venice and finally to Sarasota. He encountered many women along the way and fathered at least a dozen children, some of which he still keeps in touch with. “I see them and I don’t see them,” he says with hurt in his eyes. “We have an understanding.”

Poverty forced Leon into homelessness. Though reticent on the topic, he admits it’s a struggle out there. But it doesn’t worry him, he’s a survivor. He always keeps to himself and stays out of trouble. “The world isn’t bad. People are bad because they want to be more than they are, fighting and dying over nothing.” Recently Leon’s sister took him in, but this arrangement is only temporary.

Middleton soberly owns up to the mistakes he’s made. “I don’t fault nobody but me. Today I feel like I have the authority over Satan. God removed the burden of my sin and showed me how to be creative.” In 2009 Leon completed his first painting. Though mostly self-taught, he attributes his skill to God. “I know what I’m doing when I go into that picture. God directs me. I say, ‘God, I can’t paint it, you paint it.’ He puts the power in my right hand. That’s God’s hand.” There is no question, when Leon paints, he does in fact exercise a higher power. He calls it God. Others might simply call it “love”.

– Daniel Petrov, 5/18/10