Daniel Mark Cassity

ARTIST STATEMENT

My Still Life paintings represent the fall of light upon a variety of textures, of course, ever challenging my painting ability. In addition, they also touch upon my inherent interest in storytelling, and give an opportunity to emphasize my imagination. This allows me to explore a vast variety of ideas that can be reduced to a primal notion. Vices, joy, death, war, fear of the unknown, freedom/oppression are examples of this. Also of note, I paint from life, with no preliminary drawing. I paint. And setting up my still life scenarios allows me to visit the same inner-place as when I was a boy making things with construction paper and crayons; that is the core of me, and painting satisfies some inherent need.

Toward this goal, I arrange items in a manner that is meant to stimulate the viewer beyond the painted surface: usually intended to imply an event or story, often countering initial humor with lurking sadness or darkness: the result being complexity of content. The objects themselves I continue to collect, or construct as need be, to then represent with paint. Objects might be selected for the sake of symbolism or design aesthetics, but must pass conceptual filtering to remain within the scene. All of these concerns intersect, finally, as a unique treatment of subject matter - and when combined with distinctive paint manipulation - result in something special. A Closer Examination of Time, for instance, part of my ongoing Kingdom series, considers humanity’s attempts to grasp, and so reject, mortality. 

A through-line of my Kingdom series of still lifes is the use of origami dragons as recurring characters, and I also write a brief passage of fiction for each Kingdom painting, consolidating and adding density to my ideas (note that the writing is there only to support the visual: the inverse of how illustrations complement writing).

To this pursuit I give all that I have, hoping that my viewers feel satisfied, as if they have feasted on something dense and rich, as if they have witnessed the presence of creative power. 

Please visit my website: https://www.danielmarkcassity.com/home