Collection: Stanley Casselman

Stanley Casselman is a New York based artist whose sumptuously calculated surfaces are motivated by a sense of awe and wonderment in the intangible spiritual elements of our being. Casselman is deeply committed to the notion that color, line and form have the ability to change cognizance. The known and speculative forces that create the lattice of our physical reality are often an undercurrent within his paintings. Baroque yet simplistic, his process reveals itself in a spectrum of layers and strokes exploring a range of emotions in an efficacious search for higher consciousness.

Casselman’s process is one of contradiction; it reconciles skill with randomness, control with chance. Wearing white coveralls, hair nets and working in an immaculately cleaned studio space, the artist pours pools of paint on the top edge of the polyester, pulls a mammoth self-designed tool called a “flat bar spreader” from top to bottom, and repeats the process to add layers. From layer to layer––and sometimes even within a single “run” over the surface––he will change the angle and/or pressure of the device. Along with the volume of paint poured at the edge, it is this carefully honed technique of the “pull” that renders the pulsing meter of the paintings’ surfaces.

Casselman (born in Phoenix, AZ) received his Bachelor of Arts from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries and museums including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Gazelli Art House, Baku, Azerbijan and London, UK; Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles, CA; and Brintz Galleries, Palm Beach, FL. His works are part of the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI; and Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, among others.