fig® - Downtown Lancaster

I’ve always needed to create something in order to validate myself. My earliest memories involve tracing Star Wars figures. I remember moving a ball point pen around the contours of Lando’s figure onto a piece of cardboard that came in a pack of undershirts. Not art yet but a sincere desire to make something that belonged to me.

Comic books were my next focus. I don’t think I ever ended up reading any, but the illustrations were enough to fuel my imagination into creating “Red Bullet”. I killed him off when I was in eighth grade after he was thrown into a vat of something green at the hands of “Dark Hood”. I never resurrected him, unlike Superman or Captain America. In other words I never sold out to make a buck… not that I could ever really capitalize on a “Red Bullet Returns” comic.

I went to Maryland Institute College of Art for two years as a Fine Arts Major. At some point in my sophomore year I worked on a small film set and fell in love with the process and discipline of a new medium. I left in my junior year to earn a Bachelor’s of Fine Art in film, at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

I still love film and the control and the rigidity and the patience. It still has some appeal to me. Film, however, is not cathartic. I can’t go home after a long day at the office and work out my issues by making a movie. Film never satisfied the nagging desire to create out of impulse in order to make me feel like I’m real.

I started painting again with a new fervor and zeal after a long hiatus. Film taught me a few things but I will never be able to pour my body and emotions into it’s process. I paint, because like so many other artists, I need to. I need to leave a trail of something tangible behind. My paintings are snapshots of energy and emotion mixed with chaos and thrown onto a canvas. I’m glad to be sharing my paintings with you. Not art yet, but a sincere desire to make something that belongs to me relevant to everyone.

Seth paints out of a sincere desire to make something. His paintings are snapshots of energy and emotion mixed with chaos and thrown onto a canvas. Find Seth’s work on the cover of this issue of Fig^®.