Oil and Ink on View at Amagansett's ILLE Arts

[caption id="attachment_65370" align="alignnone" width="800"] Casey Chalet Anderson with "Tidal Pool." Gary J. Mamay photos[/caption]

By Michelle Trauring

Steamy days in Manhattan once left Casey Chalem Anderson restless, antsy and sticky.

There was no escape from the humidity — her options limited to running through a dirty sprinkler in the park, she said — so she would lose herself in art.

Her family lived in the kind of apartment that had art supplies everywhere, from crayons and paper to pencils and glue, even pieces of film from her father’s projects dangling from the walls.

“My parents were both artists, but my mom was especially good at drawing. We would do that together,” Anderson recalled. “If I was ever bored and asked my mom what to do, she’d send me off to draw a picture. She would really direct me: ‘draw a person,’ ‘draw a flower,’ ‘draw a birthday cake.’ I think early on, it was an escape from ever being bored. And I still think that’s true. It also gives me a low level of anxiety because I always feel like there’s something to do.”

She laughed, and continued. “It’s okay as long as I do work and I do get into the studio and get something done. But if I haven’t, it’s always calling to me, on any given day.”

The artist — whose oil paintings and ink drawings will be on view starting Saturday at ILLE Arts in Amagansett, alongside the work of Fairfield Porter and Neil Welliver — can be found in her Sag Harbor studio almost every day. She starts as soon as she wakes up, sometimes as early as 6:30 a.m., “really excited about something, or I want to check something, or I have to change something, and I just want to jump in.”

Then, all she has to do is walk downstairs.

Her basement studio, with its whitewashed walls and a blue floor, has several workstations — a large table, as well as an easel in the corner — that she moves between throughout the day.

“When I’m painting, I’m literally six inches to a foot away from it. I’m right on top of it,” she said. “So I need to move the easel around, and myself around, to really look at it and see what’s going on. I will go downstairs on my way out of the house, just to check out the painting for a couple of moments, just to see how it looks. You get so close to it, you have to get away to be able to see it with fresh eyes.”

[caption id="attachment_65371" align="alignnone" width="800"] "Emerald Surf," 30 x 48.[/caption]

She will often take herself to the very seascapes she paints, immersing herself in the big sky and tranquil water, she said. In a way, it still feels foreign and new to her, even though it’s been 25 years since she traded city for country.

“I consider myself a city person who’s out here at the sea shore, and that’s what I put on the canvas,” she said. “Generally, I’m attracted to thin strips of land that they’re dividing the overhead sky and sea, that sometimes look vulnerable between the two. I’m trying to construct a world within the canvas. I’m not just copying it. I’m trying to create a parallel sensation to how I feel when I’m there.”

All of Anderson’s paintings are based in drawing, she said, though they start with photographs of a particular scene. While she shoots, she engages all of her senses, making mental notes of how the landscape looks, sounds, smells and feels. What the colors are doing that day, and how the light is changing. How rough the sea is, bursts of foam and the curves of the waves as they crash down.

[caption id="attachment_65369" align="alignright" width="474"] Casey Chalem Anderson at work.[/caption]

Back in her studio, she selects the key elements that express a parallel sensation to her feelings on the beach, and blocks them out on the canvas.

Then, the magic happens.

“Something happens between dipping the brush in the paint and then getting it on the canvas, and adding color to that and blending it right on the surface,” she said. “Something happens that’s just thrilling. I love colors, and I only use colors I love in my paintings, like every shade of blue. I believe in the power of color to affect your emotions and your general outlook and I believe that for me, it definitely can lift my spirits and I can relate to them. I think that’s what it is. It continuously feeds me that way.”

On any given painting, Anderson will work from a dozen tubes of paint, which stay within arm’s reach until she is finished — a “controlled disorganization,” she calls it.

“That can get out of hand quite a bit,” she said. “But then it gets tidied up again. It expands and contracts. I can’t care about things being neat while I’m working because that’s not the priority. It’s good to tidy up so you can start fresh.”

After the show closes on July 14, Anderson said she’s not yet sure what comes next, though she is certain she won’t run out of inspiring East End landscapes or colors to create.

“I think there’s a lifetime of explorations you can do just on mixing colors,” she said. “I think that really keeps me busy, and can for the rest of my life.”

When she looks at her paintings, she feels a sense of space and atmosphere, she said, reminded of how cramped and tough New York could be, just getting from one place to the next. She is also reminded of her family vacations to Cape Cod, where she could finally escape the city heat, and first got a taste of freedom she feels here—of simply riding her bike to the bay and putting her feet in the water to cool off, she said.

“I’m sure that my landscape paintings go back to being a child and feeling the oppression of the city, and how much space I felt when I was able to get to the country, which is usually the seashore for me,” she said. “I still experience that. When I go down to the ocean, I feel a release and feel like I’m communing with nature and it gives me solace and freedom that I can’t experience certainly jammed on a subway train.”

An exhibit featuring Casey Chalem Anderson, Fairfield Porter and Neil Welliver will open with a reception on Saturday, June 24, from 5 to 8 p.m. at ILLE Arts in Amagansett. The show will remain on view through July 14. Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday, noon to 6 p.m. For more information, call (631) 905-9894, or visit illearts.com.