Spotlight Artist

Sean P. Morrissey

South
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Featured in New American Paintings

Artist Statement

 The North American landscape and respective lifestyle is the foundation for my investigation of domestic space, land use, identity, and consumerism. I question the cultural obsession with the “dream home” and the underlying normativity present in these everyday spaces, asking if individualism exists in prefabricated choices.

The suburban terrain spreads ad infinitum, and I examine the landscape for forms that have become signifiers of lived space. The architectural and decorative elements of this sprawl serves as my visual language, and I reconstruct and rearrange these typologies to question what has been prioritized for us and what we are told to value. Our notions of who we are becomes limited to the options in the store.

The endless rhythm of this landscape, the repetition of the generic, and this overwhelming space is ever present in my practice. By translating these elements into layered, flattened versions of themselves, I draw attention to the ideas of landscape, consumption, and architecture as vehicles for identity.

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