Since writing a post about portraitist and figurative artist Sean Cheetham in 2008, I still know little more about him than I did then, which wasn’t much.
Still, I’ve gathered what additional resources I can for an update post. His direct, uncompromising portraits have a wonderful sense of presence and personality, as well as a painterly surface and strong compositions.
Cheetham’s website seems largely abandoned in that its single page is linked to a gallery that is a lapsed domain name.
However, his blog, though infrequently updated, has some new work, and his paintings are currently on exhibit in a show at the Katherine Cone Gallery in Los Angeles that runs until March 10, 2012.
In addition there are a couple of time-lapse videos of Cheetham giving portrait demonstrations on YouTube here and here.
Cheetham is an instructor at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art and there is a brief bio and gallery on their site.
There is also an article on Painting Perceptions and another on Artist Daily with a gallery.
Nice to see another post and new work on Cheetham here Charley even if his online presence is elusive. Makes it tough to find out where he shows his work.
I recently saw the top painting, a self portrait I think, at a small show here in San Pedro California.
I also visited the Mendenhall Sobieski Gallery (his website link) in Pasadena California, (which I think is closed), a few years back for one of his shows, drawings and paintings. Great work.
Great post, Charley.
He combines two traits not often found together in the same painting: on the one hand there is direct emotional engagement with the sitters that would seem to come only from first-hand observation (as opposed to say, working from photos, memory or imagination.) On the other hand, there are compositional experiments normally emphasized by artists in the absence of a live model’s presence.