About The Artist

My name is Sean Michael Poole. I am as far underground and outside the margins as an artist can be. I was born in New York City and raised in Southern California. I have traveled from border to border and coast-to-coast most of my adult life. I am the author of “Gattorno: A Cuban Painter For The World”. I won the 2009 Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing. I was awarded first place in the 2009 New England Book Fair and first place at the 2008 London Book Fair. I've long said words are my paint. Now pictures tell my stories. Inspired by artists as diverse as Gillies, Gattorno, Lam, Matta, Miro, Mondrian, Nerdrum, Shepard, Crumb, Pollock, deKooning and diChirico I mix media and materials to develop a style I call Surreal and Symbolic Absurd Expressionism of Narrative Kitsch. Canvas and paper are now the stage upon which I tell my tales. The act of painting is the performance. The resulting image is a record of the act, an impression of an expression of experience, imbued with one meaning for the artist and containing an entirely separate significance for the audience. I hold allegiance to no particular school or philosophy of painting. In the brave new on line world of digital high definition where image is appropriated, co-opted, manipulated and agenda driven, I strive in my paintings to eschew the conventional, discard conformity and abandon rationality in favor of absurdity, nonsense, chaos and comedy. My aesthetic is deeply rooted in the fundamental dogmatic principles of the First Church Of The Last Resort.