Carl Cashman

Carl Cashman is a contemporary artist who creates stunning, vibrant geometric-based optical art. Some of Carl’s work is painted using UV reactive paint, which adds a further visual element to the pieces when seen in the right environment.

Carl is influenced by music and moments in his daily life which are depicted by striking patterns generally with a neon based palette, a name Carl made for this is ‘Neometry’ or Neometric Art and he originally studied art at Dartington College of Arts and graduated from there in 2008. He cites Bridget Riley, M C Escher and the Beautiful Losers as major artistic influences.

“My ideas tend to just come from a doodle. Everything of mine is hand drawn. I think draughtsmanship is a skill on its own to be appreciated and I think computers have taken a lot of the effort away from creating works of art… although they do obviously have their place, and as my work develops I may feel the need to use one. I tend to paint most of my ideas as I sometimes find it hard to picture how the tones on a piece such as the Ribbons will turn out.

The works are hypnotic, at times bordering on the hallucinatory, and blur the distinction between digital and analogue forms. Entirely executed by hand, the paintings are crisp, precise and graphically decisive, though clearly hand crafted rather than digitally produced. Cashman creates his imagery in the absence of any digital means, relying exclusively on a sketch pad, pencil, tape and acrylic paint. These electric hued pieces sit on the cusp somewhere between grid-inspired modernism and contemporary psychedelia. His process relies on the detailed draftsmanship he has perfected in recent years, an emphasis he decided to discipline following an abandoned foray into stencil-based work.

@carlcashman