Jordan Casteel

JORDAN CASTEEL shot to fame painting portraits of her New York neighbors. So why did she move upstate and start painting flowers?

A reproduction of David Hammons’ “African-American Flag” stands guard over painter Jordan Casteel’s sweet, one-story home in the Catskill Mountains of New York. A reinterpretation of the American original in the Pan-African red, black and green, the flag can be read many ways: affirmation, art history lesson, political statement.

For Casteel—a recent transplant from Harlem—it is a sort of placemaker. She became a headline name in New York City’s contemporary art scene, and the flag conjures the Black and brown community she left behind and summons a version of it that she hopes to build upstate. It’s the same flag that appears on the facade o...