Sean Powers

Sean Powers is a London-based American artist, who graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014, and MA Painting degree at the Royal College of Art, London, 2024. 

Sean Powers creates paintings that aim to evoke the sense of wonder and mystery  that is found through stories ufology—where individuals recount supernatural encounters in rural settings. These personal narratives often highlight the peculiar sensations and profound impressions that come with witnessing extraordinary events.

His artistic practice is rooted in the belief that painting operates as a form of nonhuman intelligence, offering insights and reasoning that remain inherently mysterious.

Powers faces the challenge of visually translating abstract concepts such as the loss of time, the paradox of witnessing the otherworldly within familiar natural surroundings, and telepathic communication with alien entities. This interplay between the alien and the natural resonates with the dreamy philosophical inquiries inherent in landscape painting, prompting a reevaluation of our understanding of nature.

He employs unorthodox techniques to distort and render images of natural and alien forms, akin to light playing across textured surfaces. The ethereal layering of textures and colors fosters a game of pareidolia, shifting between abstraction and representation, touching on the familiar yet remaining indeterminate and vulnerable.

For Powers, paintings are living fingerprints of unique perceptions and their movement. He is driven by the idea that painting is an analog technology with the capacity to generate imagination and explore its unique intelligence and psychedelic nature. His practice is guided by sacred values: handmade-ness, materiality, spontaneity, imagination, and non-verbal communication. In a rapidly advancing posthuman world, these values are essential for painting's survival and relevance.

Powers believes in the unforeseen utility of painting’s pseudo-innovation and pseudo-communication, finding purpose without a fixed aim to underscore its adaptability, generosity, and relevance. As he prepares to graduate from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Painting, he continues to explore these themes in his recent exhibitions, including Open Call 2024 and the RCA Painting Degree Show, among others in London and Los Angeles.

For Sean Powers, painting is a ritual and a means to keep human ingenuity alive amidst the encroachment of advanced technologies. It is through this medium that he strives to create a space for imagination, where the convergence of the natural and posthuman can be contemplated and appreciated.