By Robert Brune
CATSKILLS REGION — As part of this year’s Upstate Open Studio Tour during Upstate Art Weekend 2025, visitors to the northern Catskills were treated to a rare and deeply personal experience: stepping into the textural world of Anthony Chase, a master of transformation. Not only of materials, but of life.
Chase, once a high-end plaster artisan in New York City, has turned the tools and techniques of his trade into a wholly original fine art practice. His studio in upper Delhi, a beautifully lit, open space that he has only recently transformed into a true working gallery, is filled with richly layered canvases that blur the lines between abstraction and narrative.
“I’ve definitely got a little bit more adventurous than I was in the earlier round,” Chase admits as he walks me through his evolving body of work.
That adventurism is immediately apparent in the way he uses tools once meant for walls, scrapers, sandpaper, even screwdrivers, to dig into his surfaces. The textures that result are not just visual but tactile; they carry a sense of erosion and memory. One piece resembles an archipelago, once bolder but now “set back,” in Chase’s words, after a session of sanding and tearing down. It’s a metaphor he returns to often, construction and deconstruction in tandem.
In one corner, a geometric piece catches the eye, its truffle brown tones still waiting to be brought forward through more burnishing. Nearby, a more lyrical canvas begins to reveal itself as something representational: a stormy landscape. Looking closer, and it dissolves again into abstraction, like most of Chase’s pieces, it lives in a liminal space.
One especially captivating work emerges from what appears to be the cross-section of a tree stump, complete with concentric rings. Upon inspection, however, it bursts into life with small etched characters, some taking off on bicycles, others floating through space.
“That’s what I love about it,” he says, grinning. “All these little characters just sort of evolved out of the textures.”
Chase’s method is almost archaeological. In one series, he uses a dremel to etch tiny hieroglyphs into the painted plaster, a surprising and beautiful gesture that adds a hidden dimension to the already layered works. Some of his surfaces seem almost to whisper, requiring close contemplation, like the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico or Anselm Kiefer, but with Chase’s own earthy fingerprint.
It’s this fusion of control and accident, permanence and impermanence, that drives the emotional impact of his work. It’s also impossible not to see his personal history, especially his recovery from cancer, as a deep undercurrent in his paintings.
“I never thought I was going to be a painter,” Chase confesses. “I kind of knew it, but I never believed I’d actually do it.”
That turning point came in part through his health scare, a bout with cancer that jolted him not only physically, but artistically. Creating art became both a form of healing and a new mode of self-recognition. That story, still tender but receding into the past, quietly informs the work, not with sentimentality, but strength.
What makes Chase’s studio so affecting during the tour isn’t just the work itself, it’s the intimacy of the space and the clarity of his voice as an artist. He’s currently dreaming up a "room within a room," a modular installation space that would float between beams inside his already luminous studio, offering both gallery walls and an interior sanctum. If it comes to fruition next year, it may mark yet another transformation in Chase’s unfolding career.
For now, though, this year's visitors were lucky to witness an artist at a powerful mid-stride, bold, curious, and grounded in a lifetime of material knowledge and personal resilience. In Chase’s studio, every layer tells a story. And many are still being written.
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