One Step at a Time: Todd M. Casey Finds the Work He Loves
Looking at Todd M. Casey’s paintings, you’d think he would mainly credit his father for his artistic career. After all, his father was a semi-professional photographer.
But really, it was his mother:
“My Mom, she should have played pro sports,” says Casey. “We have that competitive drive from her.”
That drive fostered a healthy competition in the arts between Casey and his older brother. The two shared a room for over ten years.
“[Art] was the thing that we bonded over,” says Casey.
So much so that Casey and his brother even decided to go to the same art school in Boston.
AN ARTISTIC JOURNEY
Today Casey and his own young family live not too far from where he grew up. But the path Casey traveled to find his own art was coast to coast and back again.
As a teenager, Casey took his art skills and went to school to become an illustrator. After college, he quickly realized that it wasn’t for him.
“With the tight deadlines, I couldn’t do the best work I wanted to do,” says Casey. “I wasn’t making me happy. I was just like, it’s done, but it’s garbage.”
Thinking animation would be a better fit, Casey headed west to a graduate program in San Francisco. There he met his first big influence and mentor, Warren Chang. After Casey took Chang’s class, the teacher suggested that if Casey was serious about art, he should head back to the east coast and study under artists like Max Ginsburg and Jake Collins.
Which he did. He landed a job as a graphic designer to pay the bills. But graphic designer hours weren’t compatible with many art subjects.
“Art comes down to two different points, the head and the heart,” says Casey. “The heart is kind of the emotional side of it. And the head is the scientific side of it. And I think that they have to be in line together.”
“So we [Casey and his wife] come home and then we eat dinner and then it was like nine o'clock at night. I couldn't hire a model. It’d probably be weird,” says Casey.
But the artist knew it was important to show up consistently.
“I ended up just kind of digging into the basics and the fundamentals of, where do you start with all this information that you have and how do you get out. I think the repetition side of it of just going to the studio every day...and just painting something and getting into the habit.”
So he turned to a subject wholly accessible even at odd hours.
“Still life kind of found me.”
THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF INDIRECT PAINTING
Just as it took many steps to find his fine art career, Casey’s work itself is not a fast process.
And this is where Casey talks about two schools of painting: direct and indirect.
Direct painters do it all at once like a la prima or daily painters.
“It’s kind of the romantic side of watching somebody just go for it,” Casey says of direct painting. “You’re watching a master who’s been doing it for years, that just can jump right in and juggle all these things at one time.”
Casey loves direct painting and also knows it’s not for him. He wants to move at his own pace. Walk through things more slowly.
“It’s like spinning plates. ..and if you can’t spin one plate, how are you going to spin six? So I like to take each one and break them down.”
“Still life kind of found me.” -Todd M. Casey
Casey firmly plants himself in the school of indirect painters. Think Michelangelo doing his studies in graphite, studying the human body, and making charts before heading into a painting itself.
“The way that I work with concepts is that I do a ton of studies. I do a lot of prep work.”
Indirect painting allows him to slow down and do the work he feels is his best.
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION
Casey’s largest paintings are 48x36 and can take several months to complete. In order for him to know that he wants to spend that much time on something, he has to be confident with two things: First, that the painting works technically. And second, that he loves it.
He does this by auditioning the subject through a series of steps.
First, he has several still life set ups going at once in his studio. He lives with them for a few days or weeks. He takes photos from different angles and adjusts it this way or that.
“A lot of the time, I’ll have a composition that needs one tweak,” he says. “And that one tweak is that 5% that just put it over the top to be awesome.”
He asks himself, “Do I still like this?” If the answer is yes, he moves into his sketchbook. He does thumbnails and small drawings and asks the question, “Do I still like this?”
“The way that I work with concepts is that I do a ton of studies. I do a lot of prep work.” - Todd M. Casey
As the yeses continue, he continues. He moves to small painting studies that may take several hours each. And at the end of that, he will ask, “Do I still like this?”
“So if I don’t love the painting and I did a study of it, there’s no way I'm going to go do a bigger one. “
But if the answer is that he does still love it, it’s time to go big.
HEAD AND HEART
“Art comes down to two different points, the head and the heart,” says Casey. “The heart is kind of the emotional side of it. And the head is the scientific side of it. And I think that they have to be in line together.”
It’s that marriage between the head and the heart where Casey has found a way of working that works best for him.
“Find out what works for you,” says Casey, “is one of the biggest pieces of advice I give anybody.”
Casey has done exactly that. He has found something that he loves every step of the way.