Education

2022 — MFA: Watercolor, Photography, and Sculpture, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID

2015 — BA in Fine Art: Painting and Printmaking, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID

Artist Statement

In my watercolor paintings and other works, I explore a western man’s definition of wilderness, ancestral ties, and improvised myths.

I articulate a masculine definition of wilderness, which, I argue, is where a man can go to share appraisals of beauty without feeling feminine, shrink himself without feeling inferior, and test his strength, resulting in opportunities for violence or tenderness. The hand, strong enough to throttle you, touches you softly.

Beneath these landscapes and bodies is an instinctive gesture toward the divine. I create new relics, icons, and altars. They reach toward a belief system that feels both inherited and freshly hewn. Devotion is expressed through faithful depictions of fleeting light over the landscape, the male form, and animal remains; things that only express themselves to the patient observer. In these works, I search for ways of understanding that emerge not from scripture, but from the raw meeting of flesh, bone, and landscape.

Seth Thomas Spencer