Artist Portfolio Magazine’s 20 Art Competition

John Seidel – Durango, CO

I have devoted my life to creating art, and to be honest, it has been a great sacrifice. I realized early that I could not pursue anything else with such passion. After I came back from my service in Vietnam, I became more rebellious. I couldn’t quite fit in, nor go along with society’s expectations of me. My art has always been the way in which I relate to, and reflect the world. Many of my earlier pieces embody the anger and angst I felt watching the daily news.
Artistic expression has been a way for me to channel my feelings into something positive. Ouija art is a term I have used to describe my work because I have felt often as though I am being moved by spirit during the process of creating many of my pieces.
When I moved back to Colorado fourteen years ago, my artistic expression took on a different tone. Creating landscapes has been a way of escape from the depth and heaviness of the world’s affairs. Over the years, my endeavor has been to following certain rules of art, those of balance, contrast and directional movement, while playing with depth, texture and mood. Sometimes I start with a very specific plan, other times my process starts out very simple and I will put a blob of raw umber paint on a canvas, spray it with water, and watch the paint drip. Those combined elements take on a spirit of their own and in a way communicate to me how the painting should manifest.
What comes though is a gift. With every piece comes a new adventure. Often, I will experiment with different themes. I go through phases, hitting a vein so to speak, until I bleed it out. Once I am over the process, I have to break it up and do something different like a sculpture, an abstract, or a portrait. A style that I have been developing over the years has been a combination of painting and sculpture to capture a more three dimensional effect and give more visual interest and life to my pieces.