Sean Downey
My work often starts with a seeming non sequitur, a visual
impulse that I treat as consequential and factual. Loose narratives
and themes emerge across bodies of work, and as an individual
painting or object develops, it gathers from a wide variety of
sources that reference film, literature, history, and the practice
of painting itself. I try to create compositional juxtapositions
that will operate as a sort of understated visual slapstick, and I
allow for the late inclusion of ideas and images that come from
the periphery of the initial subject matter, particularly if they
contradict or undermine the original impulse that incited the
work. In each painting, I try to build in something that performs
like a banana peel for the ideas to slip on.