Spotlight Artist

Sean Downey

Northeast
Artist profile photo
Featured in New American Paintings

Artist Statement

My work often starts with a seeming non sequitur, a visual impulse that I treat as consequential and factual. Loose narratives and themes emerge across bodies of work, and as an individual painting or object develops, it gathers from a wide variety of sources that reference film, literature, history, and the practice of painting itself. I try to create compositional juxtapositions that will operate as a sort of understated visual slapstick, and I allow for the late inclusion of ideas and images that come from the periphery of the initial subject matter, particularly if they contradict or undermine the original impulse that incited the work. In each painting, I try to build in something that performs like a banana peel for the ideas to slip on.

Artist's Additional works

Works shared by the artist outside of their featured New American Paintings selections

Featured artwork
Featured artwork

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