Models For the Familiar By Rebecca Shiffman In New Hat (2024), a crocheted yellow sun hat drapes dramatically over the face of a woman in a floral bathing suit, her figure set against a serene expanse of lake, trees, and sky. But this tranquil scene is not confined to one work; it recurs with subtle variation across Sebastian Blanck’s latest series of X paintings. Extending beyond the conventional confines of portraiture, this body of work is a phenomenological study of presence and perception, echoing the aesthetic rigor and mindset of Claude Monet in his series of wheat stacks, cathedrals, and water lilies. Like Monet, who pushed the depiction of his subjects beyond mere objecthood to reveal them as manifestations of temporal and atmospheric flux, Blanck transforms the figure into a sustained inquiry of surface, pattern, and abstract form. All the works are of Blanck’s wife, the artist Isca Greenfield-Sanders, and [...]

Painting in Parallel by DANIEL KEHLMANN [Published in 2020 to accompany the two-person exhibition by Sebastian Blanck & Isca Greenfield-Sanders at Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden.]I was lucky to discover the work of Isca and Sebastian simultaneously. It struck me immediately how much they talk to each other in their work, one centering nature and the other human beings. When I look at the paintings of Isca Greenfield-Sanders I often see beautiful, expansive landscapes, sometimes inhabited by tiny human silhouettes. But rather than being lost, overwhelmed or threatened by the powers of nature, they seem protected and at home. Nature isn’t hostile to them, and they are not hostile towards nature. Rather, nature comes to the fore as the majestic healing entity, quite literally, as well as spiritually. Isca’s work seems a reminder of the old idea that we have to inhabit the world, have to be in it, a part of [...]

Calming the Chaos Artist Sebastian Blanck's work reminds us to look for small, beautiful, intimate moments in our own lives November 4, 2020  Laura Beausire SleddingSebastian BlanckOil on canvas, 8 x 10 inchestayloepiggottgallery.com THE ARTIST Sebastian Blanck A NATURAL “Painting was just a natural choice for me. I had been drawing all my life, so working in two dimensions was my preferred way of thinking and working and learning about color and composition. It felt like a language that I really understood.” PLAYING WITH PAINT “What I really like to do is let the material speak for itself. With the snow images, I’m really playing with the idea of the white of the surface, and using that as a foundational aspect of the image. It allows me to be very open with the paint, and somewhat minimal, so I can think of it almost as an abstraction, but populate it with figures, and sleds [...]

Dan’s Papers Cover Artist Sebastian Blanck Paints a ‘Cobalt Sky’ January 11, 2020 “Being an artist was never a choice for me,” says this week’s cover artist, Sebastian Blanck. “I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t making things.” Having been exposed to art at a young age by his mother, Blanck has been creating his entire life. What was the inspiration for this piece? I am inspired by daily life and my work is loosely a journal. I show the quiet moments in life. Images that I think are beautiful and that I want to share with the world. This painting, “Cobalt Sky,” is based on a day I spent sledding with my two sons in the Hudson River Valley. It is one of the larger paintings in an ongoing series of snow scenes. It was part of a show I had in Aspen, Colorado a [...]