BIO

Seth Campbell was born in Washington, DC and moved to Frederick, Maryland in his youth.  He Graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a BFA in English Literature and a minor in Painting.  Later, he lived at the Lamont Street Collective (LSC), an arts and activist community that was located in Mount Pleasant, DC for many years.  Seth and the other Lamont Street Collective Members put on a bi-annual art show called “Salon De Libertad” that features local painters, musicians, sculptors, and a variety of activities by and for the community.  The LSC sought to create a safe space for everyone, with an emphasis on issues like gentrification and the rights of marginalized communities.  Seth is currently in the Master Artist Program at the compass Atelier school in Rockville, Maryland.  Recently he won honorable mention at the Rockville Art League Juried Members Spring Show.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I create oil paintings from life, finding often overlooked scenes and elevating them.  We human beings go through our lives (for the most part) paying attention only to certain types of visual experiences, ignoring those which fall below our aesthetic or functional radar.  I am drawn to paint the ordinary subjects that hide in plain sight.  I find these subjects by looking around me wherever I find myself, but I also go out in search of them.  

I select a subject that catches my eye, maybe some objects arranged by someone else, or maybe random objects, and I see how they form relationships to each other.  I am looking for dissonance, and despite that dissonance, a kind of harmony.  At first, when most people look at one of my paintings, they may not know what they’re looking at, but as they look the elements resolve themselves.  Once the subject is clear, the process of looking starts to be about the pleasure of looking, about light, color, and composition.   

Though my style is economical, using decisive mark making. It is often an evocation of mood using things like quality of light and play of color.  I look at things from unusual angles, sometimes looking down sharply or up at the ceiling.  I half describe with my brushstroke and I half imply what is there.  It is partly the experience of looking that I seek to relay to the viewer.  Looking is mysterious and so is painting; when one looks at my paintings, they flow from uncertainty to recognition, hopefully with some mystery left over.

RESUME

Education

Graduate of Master Artist Program at The Compass Atelier, Rockville MD, 2020

Studied under Duane Keiser at The Compass Atelier, Rockville MD, 2019

Studied Painting at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, St Mary’s City MD, 1995

Awards

Honorable Mention at the Rockville Art League Juried Members Spring Show, Rockville, Maryland, 2019

Group Exhibitions

Signal Financial’s Second “Art in the City” Show, Signal Financial Credit Union, Washingon, DC, 2019