Jordan Casteel (b. 1989, Denver, CO) is a portraitist based in New York City. Casteel photographs people from her community and poses them in their own environments before transforming the composition into life-sized paintings. By focusing on largely underrepresented individuals, Casteel challenges the traditional procession of portraits in major arts institutions. Casteel received her BA from Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA for Studio Art (2011) and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT (2014).
Casteel’s portraits have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the New Museum, NY (2020), the Denver Art Museum, CO (2019), and the Iris B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, CA (2019), among others. Her work is included in the permanent collections of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Denver Art Museum, CO; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, among others. She is an Associate Professor of Painting at Rutgers University – Newark. Casteel’s drawings are featured in Between the Lines: An RxART Coloring Book by Contemporary Artists – Volume 8.