Vincent Castiglia: The Man Who Paints With His Own Blood

Have you ever heard artists claim to put their blood, sweat and tears into their work? Well they do by virtue of the time and energy they put into their work, but Vincent Castiglia means it: he paints with his own blood.

Vincent Castiglia was born April 8, 1982 in Brooklyn, New York. He is internationally acclaimed for his figurative paintings with metaphysical and often nightmarish subject matters. Castiglia paints exclusively in human blood, which contains iron oxide, on paper.

The New York painter has a new exhibit, “Resurrection,” in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood that opened on Thursday, September 27 and ran through October. It featured a number of Castiglia’s paintings from the last 10 years, all of which were created with his blood.

30 year old Castiglia said in a recent interview that his first experiments with blood were prompted by a “need to connect with my work on the most intimate level.”

He explained the content of blood as the reason why it’s ideal. According to him, human blood contains iron oxide; a pigment found in many traditional paints, and which occurs naturally in iron ore and common rust.

Although some people regard his paintings as creepy, he said the public’s reaction in the past has been overwhelmingly positive.

“My response would be to really take a look at the content of the work, which overshadows what it’s made from, I think,” he said. “In order for something to be a gimmick, it really would have to lack substance.”

“As soon as we begin to exist as organic matter, our material state begins seeking a return to the first state from which it came, on several levels, through life processes. Our particles seem borrowed, as if only for a moment in the breadth of eternity. Our bodies appear, soak up and contain the vital fluid of existence, to give it shape and form, only then to relinquish this substance as to “ring out” the life force from a worn out “flesh-suit” back into the void. As I see it, blood is a sacred creative agent, and through its use in my work I feel that I am connecting on the most direct level with the essence of life,” Castiglia wrote on his website.

Castiglia’s paintings are monochromatic tableaux examining life, death, and the human condition. Dominant work themes include the symbiosis of birth and death, the transience of man, and the pitfalls of mortality. The images themselves, as he sees them, form as crystallizations of Castiglia’s experiences, freed from the psyche. Through his work the viewer is forced into a re-acquaintance with life and urgency that might not otherwise take place. While many surrealists cite fantasy or dreams as their inspiration, Castiglia’s Visionary art is connected to a life story which is highly allegorical.

As decomposition and decay are so much a part of life as birth and growth, one can see this cycle occur in Castiglia’s work. Castiglia’s art confronts the innate fear of these natural phenomena and exposes their reality by the precise rendering of these conventionally intangible facts. Contradiction and struggle give the work a life of its own. His unique visual language is stripped of all but the essential elements.

Some of his works include The Sleep, Gravity, Stings of the Lash, Feeding, The Stare, Multiply Thy Sorrow, The Great Whore

One of his larger, more detailed paintings can take more than three months to complete. His paintings range in price from $950 to $26,000.

The power of the mind is without limits; creativity has no boundaries. But painting with your own blood, uh? Is this just art? (Wikipedia,Reuters, V. Castiglia) 

Travails of The Failing Nation

Nigeria is crying profusely that she needs a doctor. I bet we can all hear her cry. We must act now! We must wipe her tears. These tragedies must not continue. We can’t continue watching people die like animals. We must act now!

Yesterday, some people left their homes to go rejoice with a friend at Ogbomoso. They left Oyo hale and hearty and said bye-bye to folks back home who would expect them back before the end of the day. Their driver wasn’t overspeeding and he was following traffic rules until an ill-fated truck driver left his lane and hit the bus. All the passengers died. The men, the women, the children, the babies, the pregnant woman; they all died.

We are bearing the brunt of our Government’s incompetence; their failure to instill discipline in contractors and ensure projects are completed as at when due, their failure to reduce trucks, lorries, and tanker traffic on our highways by ensuring they only travel at night, or ensure a working rail system so that goods can be transported through rail and not by road. If you have ever travelled on Oyo-Ogbomoso road, you will understand that these big vehicles really need to leave our highways. The decision makers have not seen anything bad in this. How many more people have to die? The business moguls who own these trucks have not seen what their vehicles are causing. Maybe people who believe they are using their victims’ blood have a point. Afterall, this is Africa, the home of black magic. But, are you happy to see others cry?

This morning, two churches were bombed in Bauchi, eleven people died. I’m not sure if it was Boko Haram, but I think I heard someone say it was the group. Another menace in our society. Yet some people believe these attacks are politically motivated. Who are those people that rejoice in seeing others hurt? Are we still humans?

The tragedy continues as a passenger aircraft with 153 on board crashed into a residential part of Iju-Ishaga in Lagos State. All the passengers died. Only God knows how many residents of the area would be victims. Questions people have been asking circles around the cause of the crash. What could have caused the crash? The aircraft left Abuja for Lagos and was even close to the airport before crashing. We heard news of distress call made before the crash, but was anything done about that? What caused the crash? Could it be because the aircraft lacked required maintenance? Could it be the work of a suicide bomber? Did the pilot lose control? A journalist, Sonnie Ekwowusi wrote an article in one of the dailies last week about the deplorable state of a Dana aircraft he boarded from Abuja to Lagos, but was anything done about this? These are questions we don’t have answers to and we may never get answers to. The passengers are dead. The pilots are dead. Those are the people whose information would have been genuine, and they are all dead. That is all we are left with, grief and questions we may never find answers to. But what do we expect, I heard the aircraft is 22 years old.

Isn’t it time we took actions? If we do all we are supposed to do right and these kind of tragedies happen inevitably, wouldn’t it be easier then to just face God and cry as we let our hearts out to him?

Business moguls who could buy trains to transport their goods and help reduce big vehicles traffic on our highways, contracts that should finish projects given to them by the government, airline operators that cut down on maintenace budget, government that would not put the right policies in place; enforce right laws and improve the country’s situation, you all have God to answer to.

I hate to see the world cry. I guess you do. Keep doing everything wrong. God will judge you by the works of your hand. The blood of the innocent souls that died as a result of your actions cries for vengeance and God said “vengeance is mine”. I await how you will escape His wrath when he decides to unleash it on you and your children. May the souls of the departed rest in peace.