John Casey "Beautiful Butt" 8x10 Painting

Acrylic paint on 8x10 panel

Born on Friday the 13th in 1964 in Salem, Massachusetts, I started inventing creatures as soon as I could hold a crayon. Drawings from when I was 3 years old reveal an obsession with the figure. The figures in these drawings show a child’s distorted perceptions and a fascination with skulls, teeth, spirographic eyes, and invented body parts. My obsession with strange creatures continues to this day with the introduction of anthropomorphic flora and fauna to my drawings, paintings, and sculptures. I graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston with a BFA.

I currently live in Oakland, California with my wife, artist Mary Kalin-Casey.
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Although I’ve never smoked, I’ve had cigarettes and smokers around me all of my life. For me, cigarettes are fascinating, intimate, personal and traditionally, a kind of social currency. Nowadays cigarettes are considered taboo and smoking is almost like practicing dark magic. But human nature is a tenacious beast. We commit our sins and people still continue to smoke. Damaging themselves and the environment, smokers discard their butts willy nilly, creating a sad and beautiful token of casual self-destruction.