25 Days of Minis
25 Days of Minis
Local painter Sean Huntington one of 25 artists participating in online holiday gallery.
The Christmas season is here, and so is your opportunity to find a special and unique gift for the art lover in your life. Welcome to “25 Days of Minis”, an online gallery of affordable artworks from 45 talented artists. We reached out to one of this year’s participants, Sean Huntington, to hear more about the initiative and what to expect.
“It started as a few friends who had met on the art festival circuit, where every year before Christmas we would share each other's works on facebook,” says Huntington. “More recently it has been refined into this beautifully presented online show. 45 of us artists this year! It’s great for your artistic development, it's a great affordable way to get new collectors interested, and it's very fun. Each artist releases a small original piece every day, and it's first come, first serve - which can be really exciting! Think advent calendar with fun art instead of disgustingly cheap chocolate. All the artwork in the show is under $500, under 12x12 inches, and original.”
“25 Days of Minis” is a great place to look for the perfect gift for that special someone, the eclectic folks, or to just support a small business and add some color and unique flavor to your own walls. In Sean’s words, “Art enriches and enhances your life. Original art in your home makes such a statement, and it’s a way to show your individuality.”
Huntington’s work is recognizable and well matched in the Ellicottville aesthetic. He specializes in beautiful woodland scenes featuring local evergreens, hardwoods and aspen in striking scenes that allude to the season – Monochromatic blues to evoke winter scenes, or bright Yellows and reds of our stunning fall flora. “My work is a mixture of my obsessive interest in nature and my inborn need to create art. The texture of lichens on tree bark, the way branches curve and mingle among one another, the repetition of line in a grove of aspen or spruce; these are some of the things that fill my mind and come out in my paintings. The woods are home to me, and in this sense my work is autobiographical.”
Working in traditional and gouache watercolors, often on large canvases, he employs techniques to add great contrast to individual trees in his paintings. The brightly colored negative trees’ shapes are first painted on as a latex resin in order to mask the area, similar to the batik cloth dying technique. After creating several layers of trees with watercolor and latex, the latex is peeled off to reveal the lighter colors beneath. His paintings are finished with a protective coating, and is framed in either copper or aluminum, harmonizing with the colors of the piece, yet giving it a bit of a modern and industrial feel that clashes with the natural content.
Raised in Derrick City, Pennsylvania near the Allegheny National Forest, Sean is inspired by what he grew up observing and appreciating. Being surrounded by woodlands in those early years gave Sean an intense interest in the natural world. When asked why he focuses on natural woodland scenes he replied, “My childhood was spent in the middle of acres of woodland under an 85-foot white oak tree. I spent every day in the woods and developed a deep love of biology that comes out in my work.” He added in good humor, “Plus it was a small town, all the women that would have posed nude for me were related.”
Nowadays when he’s not traveling to one of the many art shows he presents at around the country, you can find him painting at his private studio in Olean.
To see one of his stunning larger pieces, all one has to do is go up to the 2nd floor of Holiday Valley’s Main chalet. A brightly colored group of 3 canvases painted together of a grove of spruce in strong red, orange and yellows, it really pops and shows how his work could be a warm welcome to any home or business.
Check out Sean’s artwork website at seanhuntingtonart.com
View and sign up for the daily new painting email releases at 25daysofminis.com
