Aidan / Cazeau

Artist Statement

My most recent work is titled: Wings. It’s the culmination of a couple years examining my own body in space and how I can display the body being affected by things we can’t see. I’d mostly been doing portraits of other people, mainly my family and friends, but I rarely made ones for myself. For me, portrait drawing is a very intimate process between me and the person I’m drawing even though that person may not be in the room with me. I’m spending hours examining their face and studying the picture to see how much of the real life person is coming through, if at all. When I gift a portrait I feel like I’m communicating, “I see you!” to whomever is receiving my work. Believe it or not, it’s taken some practice to do that process with just myself. With Wings, I wanted to look inwards and find four private moments to draw. The body is cutting through the white space messily. Without actually drawing angel wings, I wanted to highlight the areas of the body where wings might attach to, allude to wings with hand and body shapes, and show how the body may or may not be weighed down by them.
To make these self portraits, I posed in pictures for myself and then sketched them on poster paper with a ticonderoga pencil. Then I inked them. However, what you see here is when I eventually transferred to working on Procreate with an Ipad and stylus. This allowed me to take what I’d done on paper and add even more detail as well as work on a larger scale. All four of these works are two feet by three feet.
Oftentimes, what affects us most is what we can’t see. This goes for positive and negative things. Depression, anxiety, certain forms of discrimination, as well as intuition, love, and hope. I’ve taken a liking to turning body parts and physical objects invisible. What is the effect these things have on us? How is that shown in the body? Are wings on the body a burden? Would someone feel ashamed of their wings and want to hide them? These are the types of questions I’m thoroughly enjoying encountering. I’m excited to continue exploring them.

Biography

Aidan was born in Los Angeles, California, but spent most of his childhood growing up in Seattle, Washington. The arts were where Aidan felt both the safest as well as free to take risks and experiment. He’d often sit with his dad at the dinner table and they’d spend hours together as his dad taught him how to draw human anatomy. Using their father’s lessons as a kid, Aidan’s favorite thing to draw with his dad were robots and superheroes.
Aidan trained for four years at The Juilliard School in New York and graduated in 2024 as a part of Drama Group 53, earning their degree as well as the Michel and Suria Saint-Denis Prize for outstanding achievement and leadership in Drama. During the slivers of freetime Aidan managed to find in his college year, they spent nearly all of it drawing with a pencil and paper.
Understanding that sometimes words aren’t enough, drawing is one of the ways Aidan is able to show how much he loves his friends and family. Each year of college, Aidan would gift his classmates with their very own portraits. It was his own way of spreading around some much needed positivity and power.

Wings_2024_Procreate_24 x 36 inches
Wings_2024_Procreate_24 x 36 inches
Wings_2024_Procreate_24 x 36 inches
Wings_2024_Procreate_24 x 36 inches