About Cavallo Art

For twenty years, I served in the U.S. Coast Guard, including as a helicopter rescue swimmer. I learned what people look like when they’re scared, when they’re exhausted, and when they realize someone has come for them. Years later, those are still the moments I’m drawn to as a painter. A hand reaching out. A face that gives away more than it means to. The split second when fear and relief are both there. After I retired from the Coast Guard, my life took a turn I never saw coming. For years, the life I’d known felt very far away. I had time to reckon with my choices, sit with what I couldn’t change, and think about what I could still make of my life. Art gave me somewhere to put all of that. I could take a memory I’d been turning over for years, put it on canvas, and see something in it I hadn’t seen before. That chapter changed what I notice about people, including myself. It still shapes what I paint. I often start with something familiar—a face, a gesture, an ordinary object—and then let the painting take a turn of its own. A face might fracture. A hand might grow out of proportion. Something funny might turn up right in the middle of a serious scene. I like a painting that makes you feel as though you’ve walked in halfway through a story and want to stay long enough to figure out what happened. I’m based in Green Valley, Arizona, where I paint, make photographs, and write. I’m an artist with the U.S. Coast Guard Art Program and the author of *Sharks & Daisies: Tales of a Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer*. Photography taught me how much a single gesture can reveal. Writing taught me how much can live in the space between two moments. Painting gives me room to put those things together and leave a little of the story for you to decide.