Chase Cantwell

Artist Statement

I am an honest painter. My abstract work these past years has been straightforward — perhaps even blunt. Truth to materials has been a constant in my work, but it also involved centering my process in my own physicality. While my gender identity was suppressed, my sense of self was literally embodied in athleticism, and my choice of encaustic media accommodated a masculine expression of strength. The struggle to lay down the quick-drying, viscous media that pushed back was laid bare. Laying it on the line. No hiding behind perfection. I embraced any flaws or messiness as genuineness. With my geometric forms, I became less plain-spoken, but I was deliberately countering with imprecision any visual delusion of three-dimensional space, which echoed my contradiction of the need to control and to be free of restraint.

Well on the way to my gender transition, I see that I could expose myself in these paintings in a way I wasn’t prepared to in my life. My forms spoke to confinement, but as my stripes started to break apart, I entered new artistic territory that led the way into my personal transformation. Liberated from all that went into creating an acceptable persona, I’m now willing to be more vulnerable in my work and to take risks to discover the emotion. My abstract painting reflected back to me the inner psychology of what I experienced at the time, but now I can be more open in a way for all to see. I am constantly thinking how to flow who I am becoming into my artwork, because it’s more authentic for me. My true self took a lifetime to come through the barriers that society poses, and I am not going to be bound by rules and expectations imposed on contemporary artists. It’s about being true to myself.

Biography

For most of his life, Chase Cantwell was known as Kathy Cantwell. Growing up in Trenton, NJ, he was tagged as a tomboy and even mistaken for a boy. An anemic, skinny kid who went topless til puberty, he resisted his mother’s attempt to feminize his appearance, dressing up in a blazer, white shirt, tie, khakis, desert boots painted white to look like white bucks, and a variety of boyish headwear. As an androgynous teen with slicked-back hair, he played golf, tennis, field hockey, and softball, making a public protest when a coach insisted the rule was a skirt or dress was worn to away games. Making art was a refuge, but he would draw only men — mailmen, soldiers, cowboys — and preferred the assertiveness of fingerpainting to crafting and decorating things with glitter as the girls his age did. At this time, there was little or no discussion of gender dysphoria. Seduced by a female high school teacher in a small all-girls prep school, Kathy, as he still was, thought he was a butch lesbian and lived as such or as asexual from senior year in college to recently.

Menopause meant that Chase could begin to let go of society’s and his friend’s and family’s expectations of him. He no longer “beat back the boy,” but it wasn’t til his early sixties that he declared his male identity publicly and took steps to align his body with what he always knew himself to be. By this time, Chase had become well known for his abstract oil and encaustic paintings through a number of group and solo shows, primarily in the New York-New Jersey area as well as Provincetown, Massachusetts. An active member of The Painting Center in Chelsea, he served as interim director. As his physical transition began, he left the familiar path artistically and took on a series of full-length portraits of women artists in their environment, and this project led to his confrontation with his shadow self emerging in a self-portrait as Chase — projecting himself emotionally as tall, strong, and daring. [work acutely analyzed by Sharon Butler in Two Coats of Paint] Living authentically in his own skin, Chase the artist now explores what lays behind appearances in both abstract and figurative art, needing to see something he does not yet know.

The Painting Center, 547 w 27St, NYC

• Art 14 C
• Art & Paper
• Saratoga Art Fair

The Painting Center, Portrait Project, New York, NY | 2021
The Painting Center, Around The Bend, New York, NY | 2021
The Painting Center, Walking The Line, New York, NY | 2018
1 Church St. Gallery, Lambertville, NJ | 2016
The Painting Center, Nightlines, New York, NY | 2016
Gallery 103, Landforms, Maplewood, NJ | 2015

2021
Artfair14c, Jersey City, NJ
Village Manufacturers, East Orange, NJ

2020
Labspace, curated by JulieTorres and Ellen Lecther,Hillsdale,NY
38 Reade St., curated by Liz Garvey The Linear Rythmn Show,
The Herb & Milly Iris Gallery, The Curator’s Lens curated by Jeremy Moss in South Orange, NJ

2019
Ice House Gallery, Contemporary Encaustic “A Sense of Place” curated by Lisa Pressman, Monmouth University, Long Branch, NJ
Revelation Gallery, Stonewall50, 244 Waverly Place, New York, NY
Ely Center of Contemporary Art, Ear To The Ground curated by Julie Torres, New Haven, CT
The Painting Center, 25th Anniversary Show

2018
LABspace, Big Small holiday show curated by Julie Torres, Hillsdale, NY
Kent State College, Mutual Aid curated by Jack McWhorter, Kent, Ohio
Garvey Simon Gallery, Select3 Invitational, curated by Liz Garvey, New York, NY
Adam Peck Gallery, The Blues, Provincetown, MA
The Dora Stern Gallery, Orange, NJ
Rye Art Center, curated by Katharine Dufault, Rye, NY
Drawing Rooms, The BigSmall show curated by Anne Trauben, Jersey City, NJ

2017
Drawing Rooms, Bold and Beautiful curated by Anne Trauben, JerseyCity, NJ
Valley Arts Firehouse Gallery, curated by Mikel Frank and Aida Jones, Orange, NJ
Visual Art Center of NJ, curated by Lisa Pressman, Summit, NJ

2016
Drawing Rooms, The BigSmall Show curated by Anne Trauben, Jersey City, NJ
The Herb and Milly Iris Gallery curated by Micha Hamilton, SOPAC, South Orange, NJ
Julie Heller East, curated by Nancy Natale, Provincetown, MA
Castle Hill Truro Art Center Gallery, Truro, MA
Adam Peck Gallery, Provincetown, MA
The Dora Stern Gallery, Orange, NJ
Millburn Playhouse curated by Lisa Pressman, Millburn, NJ
Morris Arts, curated by Katherine Murdock, Morristown, NJ
148 First Street, curated by James Pustorino, Jersey City, NJ
Arte Internazionale winter exhibit curated by Pino Nicoletti, Matera, Italy

2015
Morseles Studios curated by Lucy Rovetto/Jersey City Theater Center, Jersey City, NJ
The BigSmall, Drawing Rooms, curated by Anne Trauben, Jersey City, NJ
Square Foot Art Basel Miami 3, Projects Gallery, Miami, Fl
Arts Guild New Jersey, Rahway, NJ – curated by Douglas Ferrari
One + One, A Gallery, Provincetown, MA
Viewpoints 2015, Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ
The Dora Stern Gallery, Orange, NJ
1978 Gallery, Maplewood, NJ
Small Works, Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, NY, NY
36th Annual and Big Art in Small Packages Exhibits, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ
Art Connections 11, George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ
Baker’s Dozen, Arts Guild New Jersey, Rahway, NJ

2014
International Juried Exhibition, juried by Evonne Davis, The Center For Contemporary Arts, Bedminster, NJ
Small Matters of Great Importance, juried by Kenise Barnes, Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY
Arts Guild New Jersey, Rahway, NJ
Unbound(ed), juried by Kathleen Waterloo and Kathleen Blankley Roman, Morpho Gallery, Chicago, IL
Art Central Gallery, San Luis Obispo, CA
Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ Firehouse Gallery, Orange, NJ
The Dora Stern Gallery, Orange, NJ

I have been painting for 50 yrs the last 20 yrs I expanded my reach and started to brand myself when social media took off. I am a seasoned painter in the work and all the administration that goes with it. I have branched out due to need started teaching encaustic painting a decade ago. I also do commission work in either portrait or abstract.

I have negotiated numerous commissions to private individuals.

BFA from CW Post College, LIU - 1980

https://twocoatsofpaint.com/2023/02/chase-cantwell-satisfying-transitions.html