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

Sledding
Sebastian Blanck
Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches
tayloepiggottgallery.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 and trees. I also like to do drips of paint to make it appear that there’s snow.”

EVERYDAY BEAUTY “We have a house in upstate New York, and all the images are of my two boys, sledding or playing in the snow, and climbing around. They’re the initial inspiration, but I’ll add more or take stuff away. Our place is on a lake which freezes, and that is such a beautiful, magical space. I really look for things happening in my daily experiences and try and make sure that I’m recognizing beautiful moments, even in troubling or complicated times. My ultimate hope for someone coming away from one of my paintings is that it serves as a reminder to look for small, beautiful, intimate moments in their own lives.”

NEXT Blanck is writing and illustrating a new project: “Everybody starts as children with the creative instinct, and slowly, for whatever reason, it dissipates and isn’t nurtured the way that it should be. This is a story of how you can continue to push through it, even though there’s a lot of societal pressure to stop.”