I own and mange a service business which has progressed to the point where I am now working primarily at a desk in an office, instead of in the field where I first began to love the trade I am in. The office work is less than satisfying, and I take many short breaks to maintain maximum productivity and to keep from becoming an automaton. I often run the newsfeed from Facebook in the background behind whatever I am working on. Sometimes it is hours before I actually look at Facebook, but as fortune would have it, a few weeks ago one of my favorite local artists posted a photo of a freshly completed figure painting, and said something to the effect of “Free to a good home” for the first person to comment. By the time I saw it, it had been posted for 15 minutes already, and no one had commented yet, so I pounced, “I want it!” I picked it up that Saturday, and now I am the proud owner of my very own Sean Dietrich painting, the 18 x 24 oil on canvas posted above.
I was attracted to Sean’s work by the loose style of the small studies he had been posting on his Facebook page. These smaller works were loose and gestural, but had a certain precision of color and form that made it obvious that years of practice preceded the apparent simplicity. When I met him to pick up my painting, I said to him that his work looked like it only took him twenty minutes but I knew it took about 30 years. He laughed, and said “True!”
Sean blogs and posts his work at http://seandietrich.com/?page_id=3440.