Artist Biography
Mahlon Cathey
Mahlon Cathey is a Lee’s Summit, Missouri–based abstract artist and founder of Third Person Studios. He began painting in 2023, developing an intuitive mixed-media practice rooted in emotional honesty, experimentation, and tactile construction. Working primarily with acrylic paint, joint compound, raw texture, metallic accents, palette knives, and his hands, Cathey builds surfaces that move between architecture, imagined landscapes, memory fragments, and psychological space.
His work is informed by music, grief, mental-health recovery, the Black male experience, urban environments, and the search for connection. His paintings have been presented through Kansas City–area exhibitions, community events, and independent showcases. He is a juried artist member of Summit Art, reflecting the professional recognition of his evolving studio practice.
Through Third Person Studios and Signs of Hope Lee’s Summit, Cathey extends his creative work into community engagement—using art and public messages to encourage kindness, empathy, patience, civic pride, and human connection.
Juried Artist · Summit Art ↗
Artist Statement
What I Couldn’t Say in Words
My paintings begin without a fixed image. I respond to color, pressure, movement, and material until a visual language begins to emerge. Acrylic paint may be scraped back, covered, rebuilt, or pressed into joint-compound texture. Metallic pigments catch light differently as a viewer moves. Marks that appear accidental often become structural; imperfections remain because they carry evidence of the process.
The work explores emotion, identity, grief, resilience, and experiences that resist easy explanation. Some compositions recall city grids, machinery, maps, fossils, weather systems, or imagined organisms. Others are quieter and operate through weight, abrasion, shadow, and restraint. These forms are not intended as fixed symbols. They function more like emotional coordinates.
“What I Couldn’t Say in Words” is both the studio’s guiding phrase and the purpose behind the work. Each painting holds my experience, but remains open enough for another person to encounter their own memory or meaning within it. I want the surface to reward close attention and affirm that difficult feelings can be witnessed, transformed, and carried forward.
