About

Vincent Castiglia: Existential Visionary Painter & Award Winning Custom Tattoo Artist

Vincent works exclusively on black and grey, custom designed tattoo projects of varying themes and complexities, with a general concentration in Realism, spanning the last 21 years. Vincent has attended by invitation many domestic and international conventions, also by invitation offering painting seminars in between appointments at select shows. Vincent is devoted to the Realization of his client’s vision, and works collaboratively with each to conceptualize, design, and execute each project, each work being uniquely structured for the individual client.

Vincent’s paintings are monochromatic tableaux examining life, death, and the human condition. While many surrealists cite fantasy or dreams as their inspiration, Castiglia’s canvases are connected to a life story which is highly allegorical, and ‘transformative’, to Vincent personally, likening the body of paintings to an “ethereal roadmap” of various stations of human experience. The archetypal figures in Vincent’s work embody the finitude of human existence, with the ever present ‘thread’ of hope and urgency of “this moment”, and gratitude for life itself (as a practice, through the channel of Art) running through each painting. The viewer is presented with the symbiosis of birth and death. The images themselves, as he sees them, form as crystallizations of his experiences, freed from the psyche; the viewer is not only allowed to see into the figure, but also through it, into a deeper psychological world. The tableaux examining various stages’ of what Vincent believes to be Collective, Universal human experience.

Vincent is the 1st American artist to receive a solo exhibition invitation from Oscar Award-winning artist H.R. Giger to exhibit in the H. R. Giger Museum Gallery. The exquisite museum, located in the Château St. Germain (Gruyeres, Switzerland), furnished a cordial reception for Castiglia’s seminal body of work, Remedy for the Living. Remedy for the Living opened on November 1st 2008 and ran for 6 months, closing in April of 2009.

In 2015, Gary Holt (Slayer/Exodus) commissioned a guitar, the first of it’s kind, painted entirely in Gary’s blood, which was safely, with the assistance of a phlebotomist, collected backstage at Slayer’s Long Island show of their tour. Gary’s vision for it was a ‘classical’ “Lucifer”, not as gruesome figure, but a portrait of beauty, more akin to “The Light Bearer” concept of the historical figure. The aim was to create a piece of “functional Art”, being an original painting while serving as the instrument he plays, and has played at nearly every show over the last 5 years, the guitar / Slayer also being featured live on the Jimmy Kimmel show. Vincent later painting Slayer’s official “Farewell” tour poster for their final, “Farewell” tour.

In 2018, Vincent painted what would (sadly) become Gregg Allman’s final portrait – the brainchild of his daughter, Brooklyn Allman, and painted in Gregg’s and his children’s blood (with permission granted by Rock photographer Neal Preston to base the portrait on his iconic 1970’s photo of Gregg), painted in Brooklyn, Devon, and Elijah Blue Allman’s blood. “Southern Blood”, was released by Rounder Records in 2019, including limited editions of the portrait with each album, memorializing Gregg, who was a prior collector of Vincent’s work, who Vincent admired deeply. 2010 marked the Film and Music debut for Castiglia’s art. MTV New Media’s Horror-Slasher Film, “Savage County”, features as it’s official movie poster a painting by Vincent Castiglia, depicting the three murderers in the film. The film, directed by David Harris, also features producers David Gale (Varsity Blues) and Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow). Leading the cast is Mimi Michaels (Boogeyman 3). Savage County is described as a tribute to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Earlier in the year, Castiglia painted album art for Triptykon’s 2010 debut release, “Eparistera Daimones”. The group is founded by former Hellhammer / Celtic Frost singer and guitarist Tom Gabriel Fischer. The album’s art is an amalgamation of works by HR Giger (cover art), Vincent Castiglia (interior art), and Triptykon on “Eparistera Daimones”, which conceptually is understood to form a creative triptych in itself.

Vincent’s paintings have been exhibited at museums and galleries in the US, and internationally, including Meta Gallery (Toronto, Canada), CoproGallery, (Santa Monica, California), Last Rites Gallery (New York) The Museum of Sex (New York), The Museum Of Porn In Art, (Switzerland), The HR Giger Museum Gallery, (Switzerland), , The Mall Gallery (London, England) Canvas Los Angeles (Los Angeles California), Meta Gallery (Toronto, Canada) Fuse Gallery (New York), Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center (Ft. Myers, Florida), Art @ Large Gallery (New York) Gallery Lombardi (Austin Texas), L’imagerie Gallery (Hollywood, California), Museo De La Cuidad De Mexico, (Mexico), Sacred Gallery (New York) C-Pop Gallery (Detroit, Michigan), Shooting Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Seed Gallery (Newark, New Jersey), The 7th Annual Dirty Show (Detroit, Michigan), The Congregation Gallery (Hollywood, California), and many more. His work has been featured on FOX News, CNBC, BBC, NBC, MSNBC, New York 1 News, Spike TV, The Discovery Channel, and The Science Channel. Castiglia was also recently a guest on the Jay Thomas Show on Sirius XM Radio. His work has been explored by countless Art and Culture publications, in the US and internationally, including the Hi-Fructose Magazine, New York Post, New York Daily News, The Huffington Post, Art Business News, International Business Times, as well as Lexikon Der Phantastischen Künstler “The international encyclopedia of fantastic, surrealistic, symbolist, & visionary artists”.