Blue Cloud River

Colt Seager’s block paintings are a direct response to the land and Seager considers them a kind of landscape painting – pulling from the geometry and values of the Midwest prairies and abstracting them into their essential qualities. Emphasizing the painterly attributes of Seager’s mark-making, fields of color interact through gesture in a process-based approach. As a part of his process, Seager lets the painting evolve with spontaneity and intuition to allow the composition to be discovered. Layers of collaged canvas and heavy applications of oil paint facilitate dialogues in the work between figure and ground, color and texture, movement and stillness.            
Like a window into a thin place, these paintings enable contemplative moments to look beyond oneself. They invite the viewer’s mind to pause and wander throughout the surface of the painting, absorbing the textures, colors, and balance of form. The paintings can be read as landscapes—influenced by the open spaces, tree-lined forests, and rivers that flow through the prairies of the Midwest.