East Gallery
Bert Seabourn
The Expressionist Paintings
January 16 thru March 11, 2008
Oklahoma expressionist artist Bert Seabourn believes that paintings should contest our creative elements. “Ultimately, each painting is an arena for the artist’s own emotional tug of war. If it leads the viewer to react, think, or make a judgment, it has attained some success. The responsibility of the artist is to make a visual experience for himself and the viewer. I love to paint and I hope it shows,” says Seabourn.
Seabourn is not only a painter, but also a printmaker, sculptor, author and teacher, who experiments intensively with creative vitality. As an expressionist, he uses the technique of dripping, smearing, and splattering the paint -- acrylic, oil and watercolor. “I try to make a unique fusion of design, color, form and composition, using a layering of texture with drips, smears, splatters and runs.”
Born in 1931, Seabourn sold his first piece of art to King Features Syndicate in 1946, while in the eighth grade at Purcell, Oklahoma. After graduating from high school, he joined the Navy and spent several years as a Navy artist/journalist. After being discharged in 1955, Seabourn and his family moved to Oklahoma City, where he worked at Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company for 23 years as graphic artist and art director. In 1978, he resigned to pursue a full-time career as a painter of fine art.
Seabourn has exhibited his art throughout the United States and has shown his paintings in England, Germany, France, Russia, Taiwan, Singapore, Chile, Bolivia, Columbia and Ecuador. His works are included in the permanent collections at the Vatican, Rome, Italy; China’s National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; Moscow University, Ulytanovsk, Russia; the American Embassy, London, England; the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.; President Gerald R. Ford Library Collection, Ann Arbor, MI; President George and Barbara Bush Collection, Houston, TX; the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; and in Oklahoma City at the Oklahoma State Art Collection Gallery; the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum; and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Seabourn is the recipient of several notable honors. In 1976, he was designated a Master Artist by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, OK, received a Governor’s Art Award in 1981 and was named an Oklahoma Living Treasure in 2004. In recent years, he has taught watercolor, acrylic and printmaking workshops for high schools, universities and art organizations in several states. Seabourn also teaches art at the City Arts Center in Oklahoma City.
“After fifty plus years of making my living as an artist, I relate very well to the following words. ‘Every morning in the Great Southwest, a rabbit wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest coyote or it will be killed. Every morning a coyote wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest rabbit or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are the rabbit or the coyote. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running…and I do.’”
Sponsored by the Oklahoma Arts Council. For more information contact Scott Cowan at 405.521.2931 or scott@arts.ok.gov.
The East Gallery is located on the 1st floor of the State Capitol and open daily from 8:00-5:30.