About

What would the process of thinking or feeling look like if you could take a snapshot inside the mind? - it’s an unseen terrain that really grabs me. —Gavin Sewell

Gavin Sewell (b. 1980) is a contemporary north-american artist known for his intricate, novelistic mixed-media pieces and wall sculptures. Often exploring themes of history, time, and absence, Sewell’s works are thought provoking objects - contemporary mandalas or icons - exploiting the interior landscape of the mind through painterly open space and collage passages of extreme complexity.

Raised in central Maine in a family of Shaskespearian actors, he drew and painted from early childhood to remaster the visual world after suffering significant sight loss from pediatric glaucoma. Sewell studied under Maine artists Alan Bray and Roderick Slater while attending classes at the Portland School of Art and Colby college. Pursuing a lifelong interest in philosophy as well as art, he read in classics and ancient languages at St. John’s College Annapolis before moving to New York to pursue art professionally.

He further developed his practice at the Art Students League of New York and benefitted from the tutelage of artists including Federico Solmi, Jonathan Talbot, and Louise Bourgeois. His work is strongly influenced by canonical artists like Kurt Schwitters, Pieter Bruegel and the Kienholzes as well as by contemporaries including Wangechi Mutu, Vanessa German and Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

Sewell has exhibited extensively, including multiple solo shows in New York, Washington and California. Embracing the Storm, his most recent one person show at Zenith Gallery explored themes of engagement and anxiety in turbulent times. His work has been supported by the Durst Organization, the Chashama residency program, the Arts Council of Canada, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Kasini House and Kolaj Magazine among others. He has also made over sixty commissioned artworks for companies, private collectors, and public art organizations including large scale public artworks for the Washington DC public school system.