The Skirmish Painting

A Litchfield, New Hampshire based artist, Sean produces landscapes and figurative assemblages, believing the camera frees an artist from the need for absolute representation in painting. "My recent work explores my experiences in the commuter lifestyle seen as fragments of the familiar streaming by my windshield. In my daily travels throughout New England, I witness the slow decay of the American experiment. I watch as the great monuments of American opulence from the mid-20th century, the highways and bridges that connected our country in a massive burst of investment and foresight in post-war America as they slowly age and crumble due to neglect from the corrupt conservative majority whose only concern is to enable the wealthiest shift their tax burden to the middle class. ​ I find myself attracted to the beauty of this decay: how a concrete bridge abutment crumbles and rounds with the years of weather fascinates me. Or the built-up layers of paint slowly cracking and peeling from the walls of a long-abandoned gas station create its own wonderful yet temporary composition with its own decay as the subject in itself, as color sense and tastes of yesteryear re-emerge as its concealing shroud ages, shrinks, and yields to the elements."