Today we’d like to introduce you to Casey Baugh

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?

Growing up in a small mountain town in Georgia, we never had enough money to travel or visit art museums. My earliest memory of the existence of art was standing in the kitchen of my grandmothers house, looking at an old print of a rembrandt painting and realizing that someone made it with some sort of colored mud, something that my granny called oil paint. I remember how I felt transported to another place, another time, another feeling. I found myself coming back to that old print more and more often.
When I first watched Kirk douglas play Van Gogh in the old film “Lust for Life”, I really felt the hooks. Here was a man who devoted himself fully to creating these images with paint, so much so that he lost his sanity and himself into the works and eventually went mad. As a 9 year old boy, this was interesting stuff. Painting seemed like the work of a magician, sorcery, skill…. I needed to learn more. But I never could have imagined that my work would one day end up in a museum around the world.

After a few years of fumbling around with a pencil, I began seeing a little progress. Old art books at the library were my teachers. I realized that painting is simply a language. The language of light. And as with any language, it takes time to learn how to speak it.

By the time I was 20, I was selling commissioned portraits and a few works in charcoal to local small town galleries. Then I found my mentor.

Richard Schmid was into his 70’s at the time, but widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of modern times. I had been addicted to his book “Alla Prima” for a few years and was obsessed with his style of painting and philosophy on art. After a long trek across the country, I met him and he graciously offered to work with me one on one.

A couple of years working with Richard set my feet on the path of a painter who was making a small but functioning living on art. I had developed skills enough to create images. Some of the images were even pretty, and I had a decent grasp of the language of painting, but what I learned in technique I lacked in life experience…. and in the end, it doesn’t matter how well you speak a language, if you have nothing interesting to say, your words have no real meaning.

After my time with Richard, life started giving me experience. A divorce, being a parent, a bad gallery deal, a death, gaining money, losing money, moving to NYC, another death, getting lost in the city life, good deals, bad deals, learning to run an art business myself, failing, trying to stay organized while also losing myself in painting, failing again, figuring a few thing out the hard way, succeeding in a few shows, attempting to teach others what I have learned, a pandemic, failing further, trying to sort out what life means and how to get that onto a painting, finding a little balance….. This was my life for 15 years.

Then I hit forty and understood what the man meant when he said, “Life really starts at forty, everything before that is just practice.”

And so here I am now, managing to make a living at the thing I love, painting, while also having the privilege to travel the world to teach the things I’ve learned to others. Enjoying watching my daughter find her own creative path as she enters adulthood, and also finding my own sense of balance while I continue to try, fail and learn and get better. Sharing these beautiful moments with someone I love, and looking forward to the adventure of each day, whether that means a leak in the studio, or a museum show in Spain. It’s all beautiful.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

I believe the road of an artist HAS to be bumpy for any good art to be made. After all, we are all tempered by fire. My path is and has been a rocky road.

The starving artist stigma is certainly a real thing. In some ways, what it takes to create real meaningful art is almost the very opposite mentality to make money or keep any sort of organization in life. And so it requires this awkward dance of back and forth, in a way that almost pulls itself apart.

And if that were not enough, the “Art world” machine is, in some ways, out to destroy you from the start, chewing up and spitting out every would-be-painter who hopes to make it big.

And lets not forget life struggles that happen no matter what path you choose.

But in the tornado of it all, the joys that are felt in the attempt of ‘making art’ outweigh the difficulties. Thats what keeps a person going. And the knowledge that every one of the struggles ends up making the artwork more meaningful to a viewer.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

I suppose I specialize in oil painting and charcoal drawing. But in my mind, my passion is story telling… or emotion sharing. The medium through which I like to do this happens to be colored mud, but if paint didn’t exist, I would probably be fumbling around with music or writing or something. But after 30 years of fooling around with paint, I think I found my calling.

I am most proud of the work that I create from a raw, honest place. Its so easy to get sucked into making work for the dollar or the award or the shock. But I think it’s a betrayal of sorts to do so only for those reasons. It contaminates the mind and blocks out some of the really great ideas and feelings that are waiting to strike.
At the end of the day, I think art is meant to be a thing we use to connect and communicate with another human, and just like in a conversation, we connect more deeply when we are honest, raw, open, vulnerable… No one wants to talk to a person very long who spits out clever phrases or recites the perfect words. The work I am most proud of is the work that is the most honest, and in a way when we are being honest, we are being the most original, because every human is a unique and original being.

How do you think about luck?

Well, I think that if there is such a thing as luck, it definitely favors the prepared. My philosophy is to work as hard and smart as possible, hope for the best but plan for the worst. The rest is up to the universe.

A person who continues to push forward in spite of failure will raise their chances of success. The key I think is to stay determined. But for a person obsessed with their art form, this really isn’t an option.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://CaseyBaugh.com
• Instagram: @caseybaugh