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I want to start by introducing when I first saw your work at Sibyl Gallery for the “I've Been Here Before” exhibit that was curated by Shabez Jamal, and that was back earlier this year (March 2024). And from what I gathered, the exhibition was centered around the importance of Black image-making and how that connects us with our past, and tethers us to our present and our future. One of your pieces was in there, “I Will Rest For You” [pictured below]. And I wanted to know a little bit about the piece. What was the process in creating it, and what did it feel like to have your piece a part of this exhibition?
Sean G. Clark: I was honored to have my work in that space and to be able to work with Shabez. Shabez had graduated from that same program at Tulane, and I gained a lot of just insight about my practice. This piece emerged from a lot of different places. One desire to create a piece that was larger than anything that I had done before, with the whole idea of just being consumed by a work.
It's so large that, the closer you are to it, the further you sort of get lost in it. So that was sort of my kind of initial desire. It's kind of around the same time that this work was coming to be, my daughter was born… and I feel like we may touch on this later, but a lot of the sort of central theme of my work is rest. Babies go through sleep regressions, and they are not aware of the importance of rest, or, they're learning. And I just remember whispering these words to her, ‘I will rest for you’, just because it’s so important to get her to understand that.
This was definitely a very new and exploratory piece for me.
How do you create Black imagery through abstraction when you're not directly capturing the body in an overt way?
S: When I learned about the exhibition and the opportunity, I was like, ‘Where do I fit into this show?’ I think one thing is a lot of my imagery comes from my personal photograph archives. I'm pulling from my mother's photos that she took 30-40 years ago. I'm pulling from images that I've taken since my daughter was born. And I think, you know, yes, these images are painted, but they are also not from a direct observation. They are from photographs. Photographs are at the heart of these works. Even though those photographs have been taken and rendered into this sort of abstracted form. I think they're still very much a part of my practice, even though they're not the end result of the work that I'm making. My more abstracted pieces, they come from a place of referencing the human condition, human anatomy, but just at a subatomic level, at a molecular level. I sort of created these abstract compositions, based on the idea of asking a question, like, ‘What's happening inside of us?’, ‘what sort of molecular biological processes are taking place?’ And so I think, in reality, I've always seen these abstracts as these magnified painted versions of human beings.
So I'm going to go move next to your senior thesis, “A Place in the Sun”, which is a beautiful project. I wanted to know why this was the focus for your thesis? And why now, did you want to dive into that?
S: I think I arrived. It's never like one thing. It's always sort of a culmination of just different experiences that lead you to these ideas. And I think, I really started focusing on the matriarchs in my family for a number of reasons. Definitely, after my daughter was born, it's like I made it my mission for her to be able to just to look back in time and reference, you know, every woman that came before her. I think that sort of was a very important aspect of that. So I'm like, I'm in a position where I'm trying to create this, like visual archive for her to be able to go back and look at some of these images of her ancestors.
So probably about 20-30 years ago, my paternal grandmother's grave was desecrated, alongside several other family members, and other members Black members in this community in West Tennessee. And you know, I had never met her. She passed away a long time ago. I felt some kind of way that even in death, she wasn't allowed to rest.
How do you stay grounded and joyful in your process? How do you stay committed to the end, even though what you're making work about is so dense and weighted?
S: You know, it fluctuates. Some days, it's just really heavy. And you just kind of push through it. I think particularly with this work in my thesis show and any of the work, really, especially when there's a human being involved, or a photograph, I'm spending time with them in a way, and I'm getting to know them. And I'm getting to see them.
It's something about staring at someone for 13 hours, minimum, that you know, gets you familiar in a space. And like, you start to have these conversations with them. And those things sort of emerge in the work. They come out in a way. And in some way, it's almost collaborative but I think, to be real, some days it's just heavy.
🌟 And you know, you feel that when you put your brush down, or when you pick it up and but I think you know you still gotta make it.
I saw that you started off with landscape painting. Why did you pivot to start painting people more often?
S: It might be kind of silly, but I watched a lot of Bob Ross as a younger kid and even as an adult, to be honest. It was just such a calm show and quiet and he was doing these amazing things. I was like, ‘I want to do that. I want to try that’. I really started painting because I was trying to recreate some of my dreams. A lot of my dreams take place at night, and so I think some of my early landscape paintings with these sort of nocturnal landscapes, I think that's just kind of my launching pad. I think for me as a self-taught artist, landscapes were just my kind of my entry point. It's a great way to learn about composition and light and all these different elements of painting and drawing. It still informs my work very much.
When did you start incorporating quilting into your practice, what was that like?
S: I was always fascinated by quilting. But I think for a while, I feel like it was just underrated in a way, and under-appreciated. I took a quilt workshop. I think the first quilt I made was a baby blanket, because I want to give my daughter something to rest on. And it was, it was small. It was like a 3 x 3 square, and it was a task to try to, like… just, just the learning. I love learning. I love teaching myself. I'm still learning so much about it.
I think while I was in graduate school, something happened, or something reminded me that started to tie everything together. So I've been practicing quilts, treating them in the same way that I would do a painting; thinking about composition and color and all these different things, but one, thinking about the softness of them. I actually had this on my studio wall at the time, “I want my daughter to know soft things.” And I think that sort of put me in a space of pursuing quilting even more.
I think the thing that I really nailed it down for me in terms of really continuing to pursue it [quilting] and incorporate it into my work, was finding out that my grandmother's grave had been desecrated. She was a quilter. Every other night, she would get together with her neighbor, her friend, or cousin; they would just quilt together.
The quilt that was in the show was one that she made. And so I think for me, it was very important to one, just help her get her place in the sun, both literally in this place and time.
🌟 This is how I keep her legacy alive. This is how I remember her, honor her, get to interact with her, because I never met her, but to hold something that she made was, just for me, was priceless.
I saw you have playlists for a few pieces that are in this show. I wanted to know is that another way that you tap in with her, or get just your creative juices going?
I started to think about songs that maybe she heard or had listened to and I started thinking about some of the things she may not have, but her children did. So when I think about her children, my dad's brothers, my dad, and all of them, I was starting to think about just like, ‘Oh these are the songs I hear them singing all the time.’ Or things that I hear them referencing and for me, it was sort of just another channel to her. ‘What music were your ancestors listening to?’ And you don't have to go back that far, you know.
I want to go back and talk about your early beginnings, when you first started making art. I saw you’re an HBCU grad and that, I believe you said in an article I read, that your father had pieces of Sammie Nicely in his home, and so you guys grew up seeing that and you’re also self-taught. So I wanted to know how being in the South and being around a lot of Black culture and imagery influenced your practice today?
S: I was very fortunate. So Sammie Nicely, was my dad's roommate in college. And I think my dad was probably was one of the first people to really start collecting his work early on. So my dad's got sketches and other ceramics and paintings and drawings and this stuff was literally in every room of the house that I grew up in. Sammie was at the house. He would come by all the time. And so I think that really impacted my decisions as an adult, for sure, to pursue art as a career. There was another artist too, who's actually still living up in Baltimore. His name is Schroeder Cherry, and he's a Black painter, puppeteer. But his work is just like those works that were in our house, they were like family members. You see them every day before you go to school and you come home, they were there on the wall. And seeing those every day was very important.
But in terms of teaching myself to draw, I've always loved comic books. I was a big X-Men fan, and still am. That was one of my first sort of drawing guides. That's how I became familiar with anatomy, how to draw it, landscapes, too, color. My color choices in my work come from my experiences like drawing comic books. So I think it was like some combination of just having those things
.
When finding your style, do you feel like you had more freedom because you're self taught, and didn’t have someone teaching you how to do things?
S: You know the question about “style” and this, that, and the other, I feel we get so caught up on that. I think the important thing is just to make the work.
So I think style, it can have a lot of like cultural connotations about where you’re from, where you learn to draw, how you how you learn to draw, etc, etc. Having gallery experience, having sold work, and these types of things, style can be a trap. I think, for me, I'm just trying to sample everything and see how can I create something new from a combination of these things.
I think a word that might be sort of interchangeable with style is language. Language in your mark-making. How are you making marks on your canvas and what does that say about you? What does that say about your practice? What does that say about what you're trying to communicate?
🌟 Just be careful with style, keep your eye on it. You know, listen to your own voice.
Do you feel like you found your artistic language where you're able to articulate the full vision of what you're trying to make? Or do you feel like you haven't done that quite yet?
S: I'm always the student. The thing that's been my greatest teacher is making mistakes. And I think that the thing that I enjoy doing the most is making corrections. Sometimes I'll just lay down whatever and then find a resolution to it. I'm still working on on my language. I think there's definitely energy in my language. I love primaries. I see those colors sort of repeated again. So I think that's a part of my language. I've got tools that I like to use to make my mark-making. I think how those things manifest, from painting to painting, is sometimes different. I don't know that I have a sort of a playbook on my language just yet, but it is something that I'm constantly thinking about.
When did you make that decision when you were like, ‘Okay, I'm going to take art seriously as a career rather than do a career in the health sciences or public health’?
S: That's kind of how I arrived here in New Orleans. About 12 years ago, I was working in public health. I worked at a few different places, doing health education and that type of thing. And I just kind of got burnt out in a way. It’s good work, but at the same time it's just depletes you, in a way, and it felt like I could do more as a painter than I could as a public health practitioner. I think they overlap in a number of ways. Public health kind of serves to inform the public about whatever health disparities or challenges that communities are facing. I was like, ‘Okay, let me just do that with painting’, as opposed to doing classes on sex ed or a number of things. But I think I was just sort of ready for that transition, and I think it was definitely a big leap because it was just right before the pandemic.
I finally had quit my public health job in 2019 and I did a residency at the Joan Mitchell Center for a few months. When our residency was over, essentially, the whole world shut down, and it was just like, ‘Okay, well, I guess you really are an artist now’.
I feel like this practice just came more naturally to me than presenting data to people. I felt like there was something beyond that data, something that needed to be visualized in order for people to make connections or become aware, you know… People who read like reports on, you know, disease transmission, they're never the people who the statistics are about. It's never disseminated in that way. And so I just felt like I could do more service as a painter than someone who just disseminated data points to people.
I want to jump to your show “/dēkəmˈpōz/” from 2022. You asked yourself this question when making your work, “What are the various artifacts we can unearth about ourselves that bring us understanding about who we are, where we are and where we come from?” How do you get yourself in that mindset?
It's a combination of things. It goes back to the music. It goes back to my mother's photo archives. It goes back to this sort of longing to know who was here before me. As a young kid, I spent a lot of time with my mom's mom, grandma's generation, and you know, just sitting around playing cards with them, and doing all this other stuff or whatever.
This piece here is called, “Daily Decomposition” [pictured below]. I remember looking at all these pictures that my mom had of my grandma sleeping, or my dad sleeping, or my aunts sleeping, doing all sorts of stuff. When we do rest, we like, we let so much go and all those things that we let go, somethings get reincorporated, and some things are gone forever. So I think, you know, the unearthing, I think you just gotta start working, and it reveals itself to you over time.
When you had your first solo show, how did you feel seeing all your works up in a space? Did that confirm that this is your purpose and that this route is much more fulfilling than what were you doing in public health?
No, not necessarily. It's my desire to do it every day. I feel like I look at so many different things now, just through a lens of painting. You know, daily life. You know, I would ride my bike. I remember riding my bike to school a lot. I live pretty close to Tulane, but I'd ride my bike and just be asking myself questions about random things around me. I'm like, ‘What colors would I use to make that, how would I start a painting on this thing’ in like, the three seconds that I was passing it by. I was like, ‘How do I build that composition’. But I think for me, the thing that confirms it, my desire to just do it every day as much as I can.
You totally get lost in it. Sometimes you gotta remind yourself to step back from work so you can actually see it. I feel like, in a way, that could be rest, restful as well.
I feel like a lot of artists who create art full-time can get burnt out from it. Have you dealt with that at all?
When I was younger in my career, early on, I could paint for like, eight hours. I could paint for the whole day, but now I paint for the most, maybe three or four hours. I say that because there's so many other things that can inform your practice that's not the actual painting.
🌟 You know, you take time to read, take time to exercise, take time to go see people, which I need to work on, but you gotta take time to go see people and just interact with the world. All of these different things inform your practice. And I think I am learning, taking breaks actually makes for better work.
I want to pivot to what you're doing now at Dillard University. You're an instructor. How has the semester been going so far?
It's not without its challenges. I think the best thing is that I've got some amazing students, students that are very eager to learn. But I think, so far, so good. I'm teaching three classes, which is definitely a bit of a challenge teaching painting, drawing, and printmaking. I really enjoy spending my time with those students every week. But I definitely think, as an observer… I think that's part of my practice as an artist is to observe and to take into account what's really going on around me. I think that there are a lot of things that really need to be improved. And I think in addition to my sort of teaching mission, I'm contemplating other ways that I can enhance this experience for these students.
HBCUs, I think, you know, most of them, they have some challenges. And I think, you pair that with the challenges that visual arts have, you encounter sort of a double whammy in a way. I've always wanted to teach. But I think that desire to teach, to educate, particularly in the arts, in painting and drawing. I know what works well. To have a successful drawing class, to have a successful painting class. And I think that we don't have that right now, and we're just trying to make it work. And it's working, you can say.
When you're teaching your students, is there anything that you particularly emphasize when they're discovering their own language and their own journey personally?
S: I think it takes a couple of weeks, or really, a month, to really get to know your students and see kind of who they are. I think across the board, the thing that I would say for all students, even outside of the arts and painting and drawing…I think whatever you do, do it with confidence. Even if you don't know the outcome.
I think we sort of get used to doing these things and like resting in these sort of predictable outcomes of the things that we're going to do. But just do it. We can fix it later on. I think in my drawing class, the thing that I hit on every day, that I say every time, ‘draw a confident line’. You can make a confident line, a smooth and consistent line drawn with your shoulder or whatever, just a smoothly consistent line.
🌟 It's confidence.
How did you develop your confidence?
S: When I'm in my own studio, and I'm like, things ain't looking right. I gotta remind myself, you got this, you know how to fix this, just take a step back, step away from it for a minute and come back to it.
I feel pretty confident about my practice, you know, and I feel like whatever challenges come up, I'm not just gonna not do it or not engage with it because it's hard. You know, that's how you get better. This is maybe sort of aside from the notion of confidence, but I think the thing that I enjoy most about being a teacher is it teaches me I'm still learning. I'm encountering other people's mistakes and helping them find ways to sort of resolve those things and their works. And I think as an instructor, as a teacher, you're still a student.
Speaking of that, I want to know what is something that you discovered about yourself through this journey?
S: I think that I've discovered that I think the more and more that I do work, the more that I sort of realize that, I'm a recorder, that I'm an observer and it's my responsibility to tell as many as many truths as I can, to shed light on things that are ignored. To just expose things, show people things. I feel like I'm leaning more and more into that responsibility. You know, when people say, ‘Oh, I can't do this, or I can't do that’, I'm like, ‘Yes, you can’. If you try, and we figure it out, and we mess up, and we revalue and we keep moving. So I think the more and more that I sort of engage in this, the more and more I want to help people achieve whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish. I like problem-solving.
What's next for you?
S: A couple of shows coming up. Got some work going up in Shreveport, and then a couple of things sort of around town in New Orleans.
I think the Percent for Art Show in New Orleans, October 17th, and then I'm doing this group show, a modern figurative exhibition, up in Shreveport opens November 1st at a place called Artspace.
Is there anything else that you want to share or just shout out at all?
I think for anybody who's thinking about art or painting, or whatever the case may be, just do it, just try, make it, till you make it. In terms of, it's that confidence, at least, that's the biggest thing, just like building up that confidence. You know, it's a lot of people out there who have made it very far on confidence alone. But yeah, just try it. And if you got challenges, let me know, maybe we can figure it out.
🌟Q’s from the Followers🌟
