seangarrison (b. 1968, Detroit) is a Minneapolis-based contemporary abstract artist, writer, and performance painter whose practice moves between painting, language, social history, and lived experience.

 

A self-taught visual artist and longtime writer, seangarrison approaches the two disciplines as extensions of one another. His practice draws from literary voices including Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Pablo Neruda, and Yusef Komunyakaa, alongside visual influences such as Frank Bowling, Ed Clark, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.

 

In 2011, seangarrison developed Artconography™, an original visual language system that became the foundation for Abstracproseality™, a practice merging written language, abstraction, and what he describes as “technicolor prose.” Through encoded words, gestures, color, and layered composition, the work invites viewers to experience language beyond its conventional written form.

 

His practice also extends into live and performance painting, where movement, music, environment, emotion, and public experience become part of the work itself. In 2021, he created Walking on Air outside the Hennepin County Government Center as the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial was announced, transforming the canvas in real time as the historic moment unfolded.

 

seangarrison’s work explores love, memory, justice, freedom, humanity, and the responsibility of artists to participate meaningfully in the world around them. His work is represented in the permanent collection of the Minnesota Museum of American Art.