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

 

A self-taught visual artist and longtime writer, seangarrison developed his creative voice first through language. Poetry, prose, rhythm, and the emotional architecture of words continue to shape how he approaches visual art. His literary influences include Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Pablo Neruda, and Yusef Komunyakaa, while his visual practice has been informed by artists including Frank Bowling, Ed Clark, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock.

 

seangarrison describes himself as a “self-taught human and soul-taught artist.” His approach to abstraction is intuitive and emotionally driven. Rather than beginning with a fixed image or predetermined composition, he allows color, gesture, movement, memory, and immediate experience to determine the direction of a work. He often describes this process as painting “from in between my shoulders, not my ears,” a philosophy that places instinct and feeling ahead of intellectual calculation.

 

In 2011, seangarrison began developing Artconography™, an original visual language system informed by the evolution of written communication and his own relationship with poetry and prose. Artconography™ became the foundation for Abstracproseality™, a distinctive body of work in which written language is transformed into visual form. Letters, words, poems, and observations are encoded and layered into abstract compositions, creating what seangarrison calls “technicolor prose.” Through this practice, language becomes something to be experienced visually as well as read.

 

His work also extends beyond the studio into live and performance painting. In these works, music, movement, environment, audience, and unfolding events become part of the creative process. seangarrison approaches performance not as a demonstration of painting, but as another form of artistic expression in which the act of creation itself becomes part of the work.

 

One of the most significant examples of this practice is Walking on Air, created on April 20, 2021, outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis as the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin was announced. seangarrison began painting while the outcome remained unknown and transformed the work in real time as the guilty verdicts were delivered. The painting and its creation were documented through national and local media coverage, including MSNBC and KARE 11, placing the work within the historical moment from which it emerged.

 

seanarrison’s practice has continued to explore questions of love, justice, freedom, identity, memory, community, grief, hope, and humanity. His work frequently examines the relationship between personal experience and broader social conditions, reflecting his belief that artists have a responsibility not only to create, but also to contribute meaningfully to public discourse.

 

His painting She Broke My Heart So I Decided to Paint entered the permanent collection of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, further establishing his work within Minnesota’s contemporary artistic record. He has also participated in residencies, exhibitions, public programs, community-based projects, live performances, and interdisciplinary collaborations.

 

Across painting, writing, visual language, and performance, seangarrison continues to develop a practice grounded in freedom, emotional truth, experimentation, and human connection. Whether through a single canvas, an encoded poem, or a painting created in the middle of a historic event, his work asks viewers not simply to look, but to feel, interpret, question, and locate something of themselves within the experience.