Marine by Day, Artist by Night

By Vince Meehan

Tierrasanta resident Victor de la Flor has been a Marine for a good part of his life. But he will tell you that he has been an artist for all of his life. His love for drawing has been with him throughout his school days, and up until now, has been a hobby he does for fun.

“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid!” De la Flor said. “There’s a newspaper clipping I have that my parents saved from when I was five or six years old. I mean, it was just kid art that they submitted to the newspaper and I still have it. I guess I’ve been doing it ever since!”

But the main thing that has dominated his life until now has been the United States Marine Corps. De la Flor enlisted out of Orlando, Florida shortly after the turn of the century, and has made a solid career out of it, working his way from the enlisted to the officer ranks. “I’ve been in now for right under twenty years, it’s taken me around the world. I’ve been to places I never thought I’d go. I lived in Japan and was fortunate enough to live in Hawaii for some time before I came to San Diego. Once my family and I came out here, we stayed. I guess we called this place home because we had moved around so much.”

Recently, his love of art has manifested into a force, which now seems to be taking on a life of its own. De la Flor has always drawn whenever he can. In fact, he says his office at MCAS Miramar resembles an art gallery with all his work on display. “I’ve been doing legal work my entire career– I’m a Legal Administrative Officer – I manage a legal service support team of about 50 Marines attorneys and paralegals, both officers and enlisted. I make sure that they have everything they need to complete their mission, training and facilities-wise.”

But he always considered his art to be just a fun hobby; in fact, he didn’t come out publicly until last year when he met an artist at an exhibit in Mission Valley. “It was a small ComicCon-style event at the Scottish Rite Center,” De la Flor recalled. “The guy saw my work and asked me: ‘Dude, do you have an Instagram?’ It was then that I decided to go public with my work; he convinced me.”

De la Flor would do a portrait for a friend and post it on Facebook. Then, friends would see it and request one of their own, which he was happy to do. From then, it blew up. Eventually this led to displays at the Oceanside Museum of Art, Liberty Station, Fleet Week and he even earned a trip to Chicago through a veteran’s art scholarship.

“I went to Chicago and attended the ‘Surviving the Long Wars’ exhibit. It was a group of artists from across the country exhibiting their work, most of which served in the War on Terrorism, but I didn’t go to exhibit my work this time around because it was my first time attending and I didn’t know what to expect. All the other artists had been out there for several years. I got to meet a lot of good people, make connections and now I’m in talks with the Salmagundi Club gallery in Greenwich Village, New York City. I’ll fly out there in June or July when the exhibit takes place, just kind of walk through it and see my stuff on the wall.”

De la Flor’s preferred medium is watercolor and also graphite pencil. “That’s always been my go-to. I always have a pencil and a sketchbook on me anywhere I go – whether it be a small or large one.” He also has a love for sumi ink painting, a deep black ink made from pine branch soot, done with ornate brush strokes, painted with calligraphy brushes, traditionally a Japanese art form. His time in Japan helped him get a lot of inspiration, which he utilizes to this day.

“I’m a big history fan, I actually got in contact with one of the Japanese jurisdiction folks that worked in my office and she showed me around. She introduced me to a gentleman named Koshimizu Morikazu who lived in the mountains of Ōtake. He’s a seventh generation swordsmith and knife maker. His ancestors actually made swords for the samurai clan of that prefecture. He had these swords and artwork on display around his home, it was amazing! I saw these Japanese calligraphy characters on scrolls all over his house and I thought, ‘Wow! I like the brush strokes!’ That was the start, that’s what got me into it. If I can recreate something like this, like bamboo or koi fish, that would be amazing!’ It was hundreds of years old and it was really impressive to see that.”

Much of his work is military-themed, and he’s created a unique style of drawing where the image is represented as being on a crinkled piece of paper, using light and shadows as his guide for making the drawings feel almost lifelike. A couple of his works are currently on exhibit at Liberty Station and include not only an image of Juan Soto of the San Diego Padres, but also the iconic image of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

He now calls San Diego his home after settling here for the sake of his wife and kids having a permanent place to call home after traveling around so much the past two decades.

“The Marines has been a wild ride for the last twenty years!” De la Flor stated. “But now I have a solid home and a new chapter in life!”

At a Glance: Victor de la Flor

Marine/Artist

Facebook: Victor de la Flor Art

Instagram: @vtdelaflor