Jeff Castleman views the human form as both the greatest artistic challenge and platform for expression. Pairing classical figure studies with geometric abstraction, he takes a contemporary approach to a practice rooted in the academic realism of the late 19th century.
Drawing on a diverse array of influences, including academic artists Sargent, Bouguereau, Sorolla and modern masters Albers and Kandinsky, Castleman depicts the body in a manner that is at once highly naturalistic and distinctly expressive. The artist draws his figures from life, astutely observing each of his sitters over a nearly two month period. The laboriously rendered subjects are framed by rigid rectilinear shapes. Once relegated to the preparatory stages of drawing, Castleman highlights these basic building blocks of design and uses them to create screens of surrealistic fields of color. The bleeding watercolor is often punctuated by splatters that disrupt the piece’s perfect geometric edges, a dialogue between the planned and the unplanned.
A recent series focuses exclusively on one part of the body: hands. In keeping with his reverence for great art historical traditions, Castleman celebrates the hand for both its aesthetic and emotive power. This isolated appendage can be as telling as any full figure portrait, at once displaying a momentary gesture and a life lived. Stripped of its greater bodily context, hands enable us to understand both the subject and our shared experiences.
Jeff Castleman is a native San Franciscan and graduate of the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts High School (SOTA) visual arts department (2004). He received his BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, and received his Masters of Education and teaching credential from National University in San Jose. Castleman has won juror’s awards for his drawings and photographs, which have been exhibited in New York’s Houghton Gallery, the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, and the Diego Rivera Gallery in San Francisco. He currently teaches drawing, painting, photography, graphic design, and digital art at SOTA.