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Statement

I paint with oils, engaging in a dialogue between the Old Masters—Bosch, Rembrandt, Ribera—and a contemporary world brimming with complexity. I am not bound by their shadows but fueled by their light, transforming their legacy into something raw, immediate, and vital. My work bridges the timeless and the urgent, demonstrating how tradition can inform and expand modern expression.
 

Like the Renaissance Masters, who rendered light as an emanation from within, I strive to create figures and landscapes that illuminate their own perspectives. Their glow is fractured and dynamic—perfectly imperfect—alive with contradictions that challenge singular interpretations. By blurring distinctions between background and foreground, I invite viewers to enter compositions where meaning evolves with their gaze.
 

My work explores the tension between opposites: chaos and order, innocence and wisdom, creation and destruction. These dualities are not contrasts but intertwined forces that reveal truth through their interplay. I focus on thresholds—the spaces between waking and dreaming, tradition and technology, the sacred and the grotesque—where transformation occurs and boundaries dissolve.
 

Through my art, I embrace the macabre sublime: beauty that unsettles, awe that critiques. Painting becomes an act of defiance, a declaration of existence, and a response to the human need for meaning.
 

I aim for my paintings to provide more than self-expression. They are invitations to navigate the liminal, to confront dualities, and to discover the enduring, transformative power of fragile yet profound meaning.

Bio

Isaac McCaslin is a Savannah-based fine artist whose narrative-driven work explores the interplay of history, identity, and the human experience. With a B.F.A. in Painting from the Savannah College of Art & Design (Magna Cum Laude), McCaslin has received accolades at regional, national, and international levels. His achievements include Best in Show at the Emerald Coast National Juried Fine Arts Exhibition and the Greenpoint Gallery National Juried Art Competition, along with an Artist Residency Fellowship at the prestigious Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

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McCaslin’s practice is rooted in Renaissance and Baroque techniques, reimagined through a contemporary lens. His oil paintings, often described as evocative and thought-provoking, navigate themes of mortality, memory, and the collective human psyche. His works have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and public spaces across the United States, earning places in private, corporate, and museum collections.

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In addition to his individual practice, McCaslin has demonstrated leadership and a commitment to fostering artistic communities. He took a lead role in coordinating artists for Legend in Bloom at the Beach Institute in Savannah, ensuring the seamless presentation of a collaborative group exhibition. Similarly, his involvement in Jubilee on Savannah’s River Street featured historical narrative drawings as part of a community-collaborated event aimed at addressing and healing historical wounds through shared creative expression.

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As a full-time artist, McCaslin continues to expand his practice through experimentation, embracing interdisciplinary approaches and digital tools to enhance traditional methods. His goal is to inspire transformation and dialogue within the artistic landscape, to support groundbreaking work and vibrant artistic exchanges.

EXHIBITIONS & AWARDS

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  • Best in Show, Bloomin Art Festival of Bartow, FL,  2020.

  • Best in Show, 26th Emerald Coast National Juried Fine Arts Exhibition Award in Niceville, FL,  2018.

  • Best in Art at the Arts Festival of Carrollton, GA,   2018.

  •  1st Prize National Juried Art Competition, Greenpoint Gallery, Brooklyn, NY,   2015.

  •  Best in Painting, 59th Annual Boardwalk Art Festival, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA,  2014.

  • Group exhibit, Legend In Bloom, Beach Institute, Savannah, GA,   2024-25.

    • Lead role coordinating with the gallery director, getting artists involved & handling artwork for display

  • Solo Exhibit, Isaac McCaslin, Mattie Kelly Arts Center, Northwest Florida State College, Niceville, FL,  2019.

  • Group Show, Jubilee, River Street, Savannah, GA,  2018.

    • Displayed historical narrative drawings for community collaborated event to heal historical wounds

  • Group Show, Art From Art, Manifest Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, 2017.

  • Museum Exhibit, FAWC Fellows, Provincetown Art Association & Museum, Provincetown, MA. 2016. 

  • Solo Exhibit,  Tragedy at Ebenezer Creek, Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, Savannah, GA,   2016-17.

  • Solo Exhibit, Hidden Sight, Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown,  MA,   2016.

 

EDUCATION & RESIDENCIES

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  •  BFA in Painting, Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA (Magna Cum Laude),  2013.

  •  Visual Arts Residency Fellowship, Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), Provincetown, MA,   2015-16

    • Prioritized completion of body of narrative & allegorical paintings  for exhibition at multiple publicized events

 

SKILLS & TECHNIQUES

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  • Oil painting

    • Chiaroscuro, Sfumato, Glazing, Monochrome, Scumbling, Layering,  Atmospheric effects: Scratching/Scraping/Sanding, Lighting effects:  Transparent vs. Opaque/Smooth vs. Textured/ Flake White vs. Titanium White.  Color Effects: Complimentary Layering, Color over Monochrome, Chromatic Grey.   

  • Conservation best practices in painting & drawing

    • Archival  materials, sealing, securing, cleaning, lightfastness, mitigating humidity, light, shrinkage, cracking, etc. 

  • Renaissance & Baroque era masters’ materials and techniques

    • Titian, Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt

  • Dynamic symmetry applications  in composing the picture plane

  • Integrating digital photography & photoshop into traditional painting & drawing processes to enhance creativity 

  • Figure drawing canons of proportion, measuring tools, and a variety of construction styles and techniques

Reflections on Art and Being

After history, a mind emerges—a vessel shaped yet boundless, flesh and spirit woven from realms unseen, reaching toward a new horizon, a new state of being.

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In the spaces between its culture pulses a collective soul, the flesh of ancestors unraveled into chaos, only to be reborn through creation’s endless cycle. Though gone, they remain, threads in a weave that Nature, God, nor War can fully sever.

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Like a flame kindling itself, the mind and the collective create and recreate, shifting, morphing, and enduring through time’s relentless stream.

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And then, echoing through motion’s hollow, a haunting refrain stirs:


"There is no meaning, no mind, only matter."

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Through matter, from matter, a breath—a combustion within hollow flesh—gives form to sound, weaving this strange grammar of will and intention. This echo imprints a pattern, a pulse of purpose.

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"What am I? This feeling? This urge to seek, to create? Who set this process in motion? Must I not add my own thread to the weave? Are there others like me? Is there One from whom we originate, or to whom we return? Thought, word, action, creation. Was I not made by creation?"

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The one certainty is this: the Mind is born of the Will to Meaning.

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That first strange sound, whether chance or a trick of language, struck deeply, pulling forth fear and an unshakable resolve to seek truth.

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With oil and pigment, I mark my experience, pressing my soul into this new ground. Each mark, each painting, holds something: a breath, a fleeting life, a gasp defying oblivion. Some marks seek to preserve, to confirm life by giving form to thought; others reach for horizons unknown. But in rare moments, the marks transcend even the highest realm, stripped of intention—pure.

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Memento Mori.

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