Chad Etting Paints Belted Trousers Clapboard Houses And The Memories That Old Photographs Carry

Creative Boom: Inspiration Art & Culture Chad Etting paints belted trousers, clapboard houses and the memories that old photographs carry Working from found photographs and thrift store catalogues, the Connecticut-based painter chases the nostalgia that travels through imagery across time. Written By: Ayla Angelos 3 June 2026 Legs Crossed, 2023 Chad Etting has been painting since he was sixteen. He is now 42, and between those two points, he has worked as a high school teacher, an administrative assistant, a financial specialist, and a pharmacy technician. Nobody in his family is an artist.

He grew up in Connecticut, away from the pull of New York City – "no one in my town was commuting there for work," he says – and his main focus growing up was soccer. He was a goalkeeper and captain of his college team. Art was the real passion, but it was something practised outside of class, on his own terms, without much institutional scaffolding. In recent years, that commitment has started to show itself publicly. Chad has exhibited in the US and Europe, built a following on Instagram and taken on brand collaborations. "Painting has always been my vocation," he says. Everything else has been in service of it.

Braided Belt, 2024 Bank Street House, 2025 Targa Top, 2025 Brown Jacket, 2025 What Chad paints is a particular strain of American imagery – the belted trousers, the wristwatch glimpsed below a cuff, a clapboard house in flat winter light, the interior of a pickup truck or a man standing alone on a pavement. Many of the images begin in thrift-store books or online archives, found photographs that "elicit a response" in him so strong that he feels compelled to recreate them.

The source material often overlaps with the visual language of preppy clothing catalogues and Ivy League nostalgia – imagery he is drawn to precisely because of its constructed nature. "In advertising, there is a tendency to glorify the prep school or Ivy League look," he says, "but spend some time on an Ivy League campus, and you will see many other ways of dressing." What interests him is the gap between that projected world and the actual one – and the feeling that survives the gap anyway. "It communicates a reality that exists nowhere else but in feeling," he says.

"And it's the imagery that carries this feeling through time and generations." Interior, 2025 House with Chimney, 2025 Campus, 2025 Sunglasses & Suit, 2026 Two small canvases, both 8x10 inches, stand out among his recent works. The first is of a bearded man, arms folded, leaning against a car and looking slightly to one side. It is notable, Chad explains, for what it includes: the head. In the past, his figures have typically been cropped at the shoulders, making the subjects feel anonymous and mysterious. Showing the face, even a face at that scale, on that small a canvas, felt like new territory for Chad.

"This painting is also an example of my recent fascination with leaving the white of the gesso untouched in areas of the painting." The second is of his dog Rosie, who died around two months before he painted her. He worked from a photograph but barely needed it. "Her image is with me internally," he says. "She was a kind and sweet dog, and this comes through in the painting." The small white figure sits on a grey-blue ground, still and patient and very much present. Rosie is now marked in time forever on the canvas.

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The article discusses the emotional and nostalgic aspects of visual storytelling, which is significant for brand strategy professionals seeking to connect authentically with their audience, making it impactful and relevant, while the focus on nostalgia offers a fresh perspective.