Art by Sean randall

"Mostly, I straddle reality and imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane." Tom Waits

Art by Sean Randall​

Commissions and special orders are available. Contact me here.

I grew up in California's Napa Valley. I was one of those kids who locked himself in his room doodling pictures of rock stars and ridiculously proportioned super heroes. I was a lifelong artist, but I didn't actually begin making messes with paint until I was knee-deep into my 30s. Armed with a jar of cheap brushes, cheaper acrylics and 3-for-the-price-of-1 canvases, I started painting portraits of friends, family members, personal heroes, ne'er-do-wells and derelicts. In short order, to bring out a more textured, mosaic appearance, I set my brushes aside for pallet knives and began adding cityscapes, narrative designs and random thought-thinkings into my subject matter. 

I had my first solo exhibition in 2008 in Northern California and spent the next 4 years making pictures and enjoying solo and group exhibitions throughout California. My work was featured in several local papers and shiny magazines and I was commissioned for portraits, album covers and t-shirts. In 2011, I relocated to Portland, OR and my work took on whole new dimensions. I lightened my color pallet and added in more earth tones to reflect the misty Oregon environment. 

In early 2016 my wife and I came to New Orleans for a 5-day visit. We went home, packed our gear and 2 months later we moved into a 120-year-old shotgun house in New Orleans' historic Faubourg Marigny. Immediately and unintentionally, my work made a dramatic shift. Within days of unpacking the truck, I took a walk through Washington Square Park (the NOLA one, not the NYC one) and saw the faces that make New Orleans the weird, soulful, grimy, dangerous, loud, joyous place that it is. This was how I would express what I saw in this city: by painting the love, pain and experience in the faces of those who live here. The jazz man, the gutter punk, the drag queen, the bar fly, the known and unknown, the rich and the poor. They are all the flesh, blood and bones of New Orleans.

Most of the work you see on this site represents my time in New Orleans, with a light dusting of my Portland and travel work added in for perspective. To see older works (as well as new works as they are posted), follow me on Instagram and Facebook.