Gerald DeLoach is a native of Coahoma County and still lives and paints here. He earned a B.Ed and a M.A. In art education from Delta State University and attended Henry Hensche's Cape School in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was in 1971 at the Cape School that He embraced painting directly from nature in an effort to capture the light and its effects on form through the use of subtle nuances of color. After Studying with Hensche, DeLoach abandoned traditional painting for a number of years for the sake of developing a more comprehensive understanding of art through experimentation. DeLoach's control is in his palette. "Color is much more effective for expressing the illusion of three dimensions than value or line," he has said.

Central to that knowledge is the ability to express light in different atmospheric conditions. He works mainly in the Mississippi Delta near his home.  Colorful foliage-rich atmospheric landscapes void of manmade structures characterize his work.  DeLoach approaches plein air painting as a mystical experience. He wrote, "I feel that the act of painting is a form of meditation and study, of which the painting is a byproduct. In painting directly from nature, phenomena that would normally go unnoticed come to my consciousness and are recorded. The ordinary landscape becomes extraordinary and can no longer be taken for granted. In painting, I attempt to share my experience of the infinite qualities of the visual world."  His first solo exhibit was in New Orleans with the Tilden-Foley gallery in 1980. Over the years, DeLoach had one-man shows throughout the United States. His work can be found in many private and corporate collections nationally and abroad.  The Lauren Rogers Museum in Laurel, Mississippi, hosted an exhibit in 1999 titled A Painters’ Painter: Charles Webster Hawthorne; The Influence of Provincetown and Henry Hensche on Sammy Britt, Gerald DeLoach, Richard Kelso and George T. Thurmond.