Cassidy Austin, Figurative Painter

Cassidy Austin is a Los Angeles-based oil painter whose figurative work centers on the embodied female presence: self-portraiture, the body as psychological landscape, and the experience of being seen.

Growing up, there were parts of myself that were not allowed to exist. I struggled to speak up, to say no, to take up space. Painting became how I pushed back. It became how I took back what was rightfully mine: my own body, my own voice.

What I have been painting, this whole time, is permission. The reclamation of the right to exist fully, in your own body, your own desires, your own beauty, without asking anyone.

I paint in oil because oil is organic the way we are organic. It has no hard edges. Colors bloom and blend and morph into each other, the same way we do as people. We are not fixed. Neither is the painting.

I call everything I make the Reclamation Collection. Women's bodies, full presence, rendered in oil and given back their full weight. I paint what I call ice cream bodies. Women's skin in Rainbow Sherbet. The color is part of the reclamation too.

There is more to reclaim. I am still painting it.

I trained in Florence, Italy, where I studied and lived for two years, and at CSU Fullerton. My work has been shown internationally, including at Palazzo Strozzi and Sala Ghiberti at the Accademia in Florence and at The Other Art Fair, Santa Monica. My work is collected across the United States. Based in Los Angeles, California.