Chase Cantwell: Transitions
EXHIBITION DATES: April 29 – May 24, 2025
RECEPTION: Thursday, May 1, 5 – 8 pm
Closing RECEPTION: Saturday, May 24, 4 – 6 pm
The Painting Center is pleased to present Transitions by Chase Cantwell in the Main Gallery. The body of work titled Transitions consists of two series of paintings, Self-Portraits and The Evening Garden. The exhibition opens on Tuesday, April 29, and runs through May 24, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, May 1 from 5 to 8 pm.
Chase Cantwell’s seven paintings in Self-Portraits exude a self-assured energy—rough yet deliberate, much like the artist himself. His self-portraits channel the expressive looseness of Alice Neel, though stripped of her trademark vulnerability while embracing the bold intensity of Max Beckmann, a key influence. Like the German Expressionist, who often painted himself as a debonair figure in tuxedos and smoking jackets, Cantwell approaches self-portraiture with a similar flair for sartorial drama. Another touchstone is Frida Kahlo, not only for her unflinching self-reflection but, as Cantwell notes, “for the way she portrayed her pain.” This raw honesty pulses through works like Self Portrait with Drains, where the artist spares no detail—neither his exhausted post-surgical gaze nor the stark evidence of his blood. These paintings attest to a period of profound physical and emotional change depicting aspects of his surgical procedure, and his transition from female to male. They also portray the artist’s triumph over physical dysphoria.
Chase Cantwell’s transition is laid bare in his self-portrait works, while The Evening Garden series offers a striking contrast: six enigmatic paintings steeped in noir-like mystery. A solitary woman in a red robe moves through shadowy urban backyards, her form flickering in firelight or veiled by smoke. The muse lingers about in various stages of ritual and darkness. She is faceless but purposeful, conducting her urban ritual of setting a fire and tending to its needs. Time of day, season, fire, smoke, the ritual itself, and the muse’s movements with her shadow self being baptized by smoke are all of great significance here. Is this a specter from the past? No—this is intimacy of a different kind. The artist admits to long hours observing this muse, his model, though her likeness remains abstracted. “My relationship in six paintings,” he calls it, where presence feels as palpable as absence. The ambiguity of The Evening Garden serves as a compelling counterpoint to the directness of Cantwell’s Self-Portraits, together marking a pivotal milestone of transition for the artist.
A longtime member of The Painting Center, Chase Cantwell has exhibited widely and is collected internationally. He lives and works in West Orange, NJ, where he teaches encaustic and oil painting; he also instructs at the Visual Arts Center of NJ in Summit.
For more information on the artist, visit: www.chasecantwell.com and @cantwell57.
