Crossing Over Painting

Durand Seay became an architect having a talent in understanding form, space, light, and process. His father, being an architect and civil engineer, happen to also be talented in watercolors. With an entire family of artists, this heritage implanted the strong desire to pursue the exploration of architecture, painting and photography. In kind, his art combines the intuition of an artistic inner self, and the influences of architecture. Durand Seay's success in architecture is due in part to his ability to perceive space, not strictly as an enhanced volume to contain, but as an experience that is directly affected by the user, psychologically through movement and time. The understanding of space is gained from the action of moving within. Time can be slowed down, sped up, or stopped to manipulate how a space is made apparent. Seay's thoughtful awareness of human nature affects the sculpting of space and form, weaving enhanced experiences. Durand Seay's artwork shows influences of three movements in art, the Cubists, the Italian Futurists and Surrealists. Seay, being also one to utilize photography in his work, studied the advent of strobe lighting. This photography opened him to study and dissect movement through producing multiple images. He sees the art of the Cubists was born in this same way. Seay's cubist influence is found in the intuitive nature of Picasso. The Italian Futurist, Boccioni pursued the exploration of movement as a relationship of the object to its surrounding space. Unlike his Cubist counter parts, Boccioni was expressing movement three dimensionally through sculpture. Two dimensional concepts became form. Like Boccioni, Seay's art explores that same three dimensional expression, but as an architect doing his drawings on two dimensional surfaces. Finally, Seay's pursuit of symbolism, expressing narratives towards balance, spirituality, and human nature, within his surrealistic expressions is further understood through the likes of work by Dali. Graduating from Auburn University in Architecture, he also attended University of Georgia to extend his skills in art and his understanding of painting. His work has been exhibited in numerous juried exhibitions all over the southeast since 1978, and recently in 2009 "Imaginary Journeys", Trevisan Arte Internationale invitational exhibition, Ferarra, Italy.