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Matt Sesow was just 8 years old when he learned about the cruelty of chance and the pain of being permanently disfigured. Playing in a field near his Nebraska home, he was struck by the propeller of a small plane attempting to land at an adjacent airstrip. Though doctors succeeded in re-attaching his severed left arm, he ultimately lost his left - and dominant - hand. Nearly two decades passed before Sesow - then a software engineer based in Washington, D.C. - began sifting through this traumatic experience by taking up painting.
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Two more years went by before the self-taught artist displayed his labors in public for the first time, selling 14 works on the sidewalks of Georgetown. Sesow started painting full-time in 2000, producing images of such biting, frantic, slashing impact that they led to exhibits at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in D.C. and the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. He also struck a chord with such influential contemporary folk art collectors as Baron and Ellin Gordon of Williamsburg.
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It also demonstrates time and again that these homely if often wildly inspired talents can be the equal of any academically trained artist - and perhaps connect with ordinary viewers more strongly because of the way they embrace the whims, worries and wounds of everyday life. Sesow's gripping vision of two addiction-addled inmates in "Out of Detox," for example, doesn't shrink from expressing the manic, self-destructive existence led by its subjects. They look fundamentally disturbed - and Sesow underscores their beleaguered conditions with his thrashing brush strokes and the unnatural blues, reds and greens he chooses for the color of their eyes, tongues and skins. What singles this picture out even more is the evocative gesture of shared pain and companionship with which these strung-out souls hold each other. Even in their besieged state, they still manage to connect with one another - and stir feelings of a shared humanity with viewers. Humankind is one of the folk-art world's favorite subjects, in fact, and it's a fertile ground for commentary.
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