Tyler Casey

Tyler Casey is a self-taught, diverse artist who began traveling and living abroad in his early teens. His unique eye lends a modern and deconstructed approach to his art, drawing inspiration from politics and pop culture. Tyler resides mostly in Fort Worth, Texas but travels to Mexico often where he lived for some years. Tyler’s art contains a similar whimsical view of the world as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rose Wylie, Cy Twombly, and artists of this nature. Tyler is driven by instinct rather than intention, never overthinking his art. Casey values raw aesthetics over meaning, allowing color, texture, and disarray speak for itself while staying highly cautious of the art world’s obsession with depth and mastery.

Casey’s process is uninhibited, imperfect, and nuanced. It is not related to skill at all. Casey believes that almost anyone can learn a skill, it just takes time, but there are many people in this world that can learn a skill. “I think most great artists did not believe they had some huge, meaningful impact behind what they were doing, they just did it. Andy Warhol said he did the silk screen prints and copied soup cans because it was just easier.” (-Tyler Casey)

Tyler had been painting on and off since his early years, he wrote music for symphonies and toured in an indie band in his 20’s. He started writing movie scripts, looking to get produced when his friend opened a gallery and asked Casey to show. Casey had no paintings at this time and spent the next month creating a body of 25 works, all of which were sold at that gallery opening. From that moment he dedicated his life to painting. He recently completed a 20,000 square foot mural at a hospital in Juitepec, Mexico.

Casey’s artwork can be compared to those of the Neo-Expressionist movement of the late 1970’s and 1980’s. Neo-Expressionism was a a direct response to the conceptual abstract and minimalist art movements that preceded it. Neo-expressionism was characterized by a return to figuration and an expressive, often raw and emotional, style of painting. It emphasized fervent intensity and detachment from the intellectualism of the art world at large. Artworks from this time period, as well as Casey’s, depict recognizable objects in a distorted and whimsical way sparking memory and joy from the viewer.