Thaddeus Radell

Othello and Desdemona

2019

Thaddeus Radell’s paintings are constructed through a process of accumulation and erasure—layering paint, burlap, and wax in a slow excavation of form and feeling. His works unfold over time, both in their making and in their viewing. Figures emerge from abstraction, dissolve into texture, and reconfigure themselves with each encounter. Viewers are invited into a shifting psychological space where meaning is never fixed, but instead discovered through a deeply sensory engagement. Radell’s compositions evoke mythic and emotional narratives, yet resist specificity. They embody a kind of visual poetry—dense, luminous, and often dreamlike—where a scrap of burlap may simultaneously become flesh, smoke, or shadow. His paintings operate like visual cantos: a journey inward, where clarity is earned through immersion. Born and raised in Michigan, the son of two artists, Thaddeus Radell completed his B.F.A. at the University of Detroit/Mercy. He subsequently moved to New York City, where he received his M.F.A. Parsons School of Design, studying with Paul Resika and Leland Bell. He spent the next several years painting in the city and working as the studio assistant to Resika, Robert DeNiro, Sr. and Sydney Simon. In 1984 he moved to France, where he spent the next 14 years, dividing his time between studios in Paris and Provence. Radell returned to New York City in 2000, where he lived and worked until moving to Catskill, NY in 2019. He presently is a Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY. Radell’s work is guided by an enduring belief in painting as a mode of transformation—both for the maker and the viewer.