The protagonists in Sean’s recent works are any of the five pacific salmon species once they have returned to their natal streams. Having spawned, their bodies decompose at the whim of the elements, changing form continually as they wash away; opening to the world and passing the oceans nutrients on to the forest. Sean celebrates this portion of the salmon’s life cycle through works focusing on the point where the struggle to maintain the boundary between inside and outside has given way to a world where flesh mingles with water and soil, where smell is both that of death and future fecundity and where form has taken on a noble nakedness before the world in now feeds.

These works combine the language of landscape and figurative painting. Often the horizontal is made vertical forcing the form into the viewer’s space, without the visual retreat afforded in the traditional landscape vista. Hopefully, the gravitas within these works will inspire not just contemplation of self but extend past the self into our shared environment.