Wuss

About the Work

Recently submitted to the Southern Louisiana University 2025 Juried Student Exhibition, this large-scale painting was deemed unfit for the white gallery walls. Painted on the nontraditional surface of damaged wall sheathing, I doubt it will be archivable for much longer. Started and completed in a single afternoon, it was a stream-of-consciousness outburst against my laziness. Every decision made was quick and without a second thought, which opposed all of the academic work for my senior year. It’s unframed, unrefined, and its future is uncertain. Painting trash on trash is now a necessary part of my practice.

About the Artist

Luke Chastant is a multidisciplinary artist who prefers to work with scraps and used materials. There is less pressure for his practice to become perfect, as it begins with trash. His current artistic and meditative process involves airbrush painting, which offers fluidity and demands present focus. His content plays between control and freedom, visually represented using tape and intuitive hand movements. Informed by compulsive thoughts and fear-induced research on religion, his work is an active practice of finding the right path in life. There is sometimes a clash between exploring and escaping these thoughts during creation, though it is allowed. He believes that everything has its place and purpose, so even his most crowded compositions contain harmony. For Luke, it feels selfish to create art in these times of more crisis and not so much harmony, but it feels even worse to just consume.