In 2017, Jordan Casteel painted Yvonne and James, showing a bundled-up couple holding hands against the cold. Yvonne and James II (2021) shows James in their apartment – now alone, with only a wedding portrait to hold after Yvonne passed away. Jordan paints windows into the lives of her subjects with enough detail that they don’t feel like strangers. She breathes life into the spaces their lives are lived – a family restaurant, the subway, a Buddhist temple. Jordan’s paintings ask what can we learn about a person when we slow down enough to see them?
When Jordan began to spend more time in the...
Bio
Jordan Casteel (she/her) was born in 1989 in Denver, Colorado. She lives and works between Harlem, New York and Hudson Valley, New York.
Accolades
Jordan was a 2021 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship aka the ‘Genius Grant.’