Rhett Baruch Gallery is thrilled announce Colt Seager’s inaugural solo exhibition, following his debut as the first painter featured in our gallery in 2022. This show marks a significant milestone in his career, offering a deeper exploration of his evolving practice and providing an opportunity for our growing audience to engage with his distinct vision.

In Seager's paintings, color is more than just a visual element—it is a language, a conversation between nature and the viewer. He is drawn to the unexpected placement of colors in the natural world, where vibrant hues and soft tones play off each other in surprising ways. He finds beauty in these relationships, where each color tells a story and creates a unique dialogue within the canvas. His approach to painting is deeply personal and intuitive. For him, a painting is only complete when the colors and forms align in a way that resonates deeply. His work doesn’t seek to replicate nature but to translate its inherent beauty into something that is felt rather than merely seen. It’s this connection to the depth of color that shapes his compositions, with every hue chosen not for its literal accuracy but for its ability to stir something within.

Drawing inspiration from the wild landscape around him, Seager’s paintings frequently feature the striking colors found in grasses, wildflowers, winding rivers and tree-lined forests in the Midwest. "I find myself deeply connected to the Celtic tradition of the thin place, which emphasizes the spirituality in the landscape around us. This is a place where connection to the Divine seems effortless, as if the veil that separates heaven and earth has been lifted. These paintings act like a window into that thin place, enabling contemplative moments to look beyond yourself. They invite your mind to pause and wander throughout the surface of the painting, absorbing the textures, colors, and balance of form.”

The act of painting becomes a conversation, where hues and vertical shapes reveal themselves gradually through the process. Each work is revisited and reworked in entire sections, building up colors and letting them muddy. The surface itself becomes a living presence—where the materiality of thick impasto rises alongside smoother expanses of color.

Inherent in each of Colt Seager’s (b. 1993, Illinois) works is his spirituality—in particular the Celtic notion of the “thin places” that exist between heaven and earth, often found in nature. “Think of a sunset in the mountains or being by a river or on the beach—these awe-inspiring moments where you get glimpses of the divine,” he explains. “I think of art as that in a lot of ways. It’s a thin place while I’m actually creating and working, but my goal is for other people to feel that thin place, where they are given a moment to pause and ask the question: Why are we here?"

INSTALLATION VIEWS