INTERVIEW WITH MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST COLT SEAGER

Colt Seager is an abstract painter and multidisciplinary artist living and working outside of Chicago, IL. A graduate from Wheaton College where he studied art & theology, his background in art goes all the back to childhood as his grandmother was a professional artist he was surrounded by her art He didn’t begin taking art seriously until college where he spent a lot of time printmaking and doing graphic design.

I first explored painting for my senior show and from that moment on, I fell in love with the medium. When it comes to painting, I am 100% self taught. I never took painting classes in college so it has been a very explorative medium for me. In many ways, there is a deep freedom that I paint from because of this lack of formal painting education.

Highlights Colt

I took the leap in November 2019 and began the year with a virtual solo show through Abstract Mag. Following that, I participated in a few other virtual shows due to COVID-19 with Abstract Mag and Peter Ibsen/Sunday-S gallery. This past Autumn, I also entered into representation with Hugomento, a boutique art gallery located in the creative hub of Dogpatch, San Francisco. They specialize in curating unique collections of contemporary art, pottery, and one-of-a-kind objects.

Your greatest inspirations or influences?

When it comes to inspiration, music is incredibly important. I listen to a wide variety but always come back to instrumental genres like jazz, classical, and lo-fi house. In addition to music, I find deep inspiration from nature and raw materials like old beams or concrete pillars. There is something beautiful about the intersection of man-made and the natural world. The natural world creates such beautiful moments, textures, and surfaces that always move me to interpret the moments I experience through abstraction.

My greatest influence is Abstract Expressionism. The scale, textures, and exploration of the painters who pioneered this movement is a source of encouragement in my own work. I constantly reference the attitudes, work ethics, and examples set by artists like Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Joan Mitchell, Phillip Guston, and many others.

Learning about the past is extremely important for me and presents rich inspiration as I dialogue with it in my work. 

Tell uS about your creative process? Work you are most proud of, things you are looking forward to in 2021?

My creative process is extremely explorative and I work solely based on intuition and discovery. I don’t do any pre-planning for paintings or sculptures but rather, let the action of creating carry me through the process. Oftentimes this looks like a vigorous work session followed by a very quiet hour or two of sitting and listening to the work. For my paintings, I work predominantly with oil paint and don’t spend too much time mixing colors. I usually grab colors on the spot, squeeze tubes into large mixing bowls or right onto the canvas and begin adding paint onto the canvas. I often scrape a section out or let it dry and paint over an area, ultimately following my intuition and letting the painting lead me to where it needs to go. 

For sculptures, the process is actually quite similar. I work with found or salvaged materials such as pieces of concrete and old wood beams. I take the pieces of concrete or wood and put them in various stacked arrangements, trying to find the balancing point between the shapes and materials. Then I secure them to a steel base and incorporate cotton string or whatever is needed to make the work feel completed.

The work that I am most proud of is probably the last 4-5 months worth of painting and sculpture work. It has not been publicly viewed but it consists of highly textured, large scale paintings and sculptures. The paintings consist of collaged, torn, and sewn canvas with fields of color or simple shapes. The sculptures utilize a lot of found materials that I collected over the last year and they offer a really nice dialogue with the paintings. I’m quite excited to reveal this new body of work in the coming months and am excited to see how it resonates with people in various ways.

Lastly, I will be having a solo show in the Fall of this year at Hugomento. I’m really looking forward to that show.

How has this year changed your creativity or how you see the art industry changing moving forward?

This year has allowed me to slow down and give more time to my process. I have a tendency to work fast so it has been really good for me to spend more time on my work, lean into the process, and give it plenty of breathing room. I have seen my creativity change a lot this year in ways I wouldn’t have expected. My eyes have started to see more inspiration in the world around me.

 The art world is certainly changing in big ways (as is everything else). I find there to be a lot of exciting opportunities for new artists like me to utilize platforms like Instagram that tend to dismantle the art world hierarchy. It allows for more accessibility to art—whether you follow an artists journey or acquire a piece more easily. The world is clearly hurting and broken and I think art is a step in the right direction for the world to begin healing. 

Anything else you'd like to share?

Slow down, take risks, and spend more time in nature.