The Writing’s on the Wall

Language and Silence in the Visual Arts

For artist Jordan Casteel and fashion designer Batsheva Hay, it was love at first sight. While their husbands, both photographers, had been close for years, the two women struck up a friendship of their own during the early days of the pandemic, when the Denver-born, New York–based painter was hunting for her wedding dress. “I knew I didn’t want to wear a white dress. I wanted to wear something fun, playful, and representative of me,” says Casteel. After the artist’s now husband, David Schulze, recommended Hay, known for her flouncy, printed frocks, the designer wound up making Casteel two wedding dresses: one of blue and yellow wax-print fabric and the other of red moiré.

Before putting brush to canvas, the painter Jordan Casteel begins her work with a camera. “My photographs are usually pretty scrappy,” the artist says of the quick snaps she takes of strangers, acquaintances and loved ones before rendering them as vibrant oil portraits. Because her subjects aren’t typically present in the studio while she works, Casteel uses her reference material as well as her mind’s eye to create each painting. “They trust me entirely to represent them through my own field of view, quite literally,” she says. Casteel’s dynamic perspective is the focal point of “Field of view,” her latest solo exhibition at the Hill Art Foundation in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.