About the artist.
I’m Sean, and this is a bit of my story that led to the creation of Fine Art Rocks. I’m a painter, photographer, lapidary (stone) artist, jeweler and musician living in Utah with my dog Banjo. The combination of several different art forms can be challenging to showcase in one platform, but Fine Art Rocks is an attempt to do just that. In the name alone, there are multiple meanings that touch on fine art paintings, natural rocks and minerals, and also music. I have played in bands for over 20 years as a bassist and guitar player.
I grew up in a very creative household and always sketched and drew in my notebooks as a kid, but it wasn’t until after college in that I began seriously dabbling in the visual arts. All of my high school art credits came from band class as I was a trumpet player, so even though I always enjoyed visual arts, it took a cross country road trip and a move from Cincinnati, Ohio to Austin, Texas to really break me out of my shell and begin painting.
On a trip that was planned without a real end in mind, I packed my van and went on a two month excursion across the United States to visit many of the incredible national parks I’d read about and seen breathtaking pictures of. The seats in the van were removed to make space for a bed, cooler, guitar and a camera.
That adventure was documented through the lens - incredible nature and landscapes captured in balanced compositions with striking colors and majestic beauty. Before long, those images were begging to be on canvas and adorning my walls. Instead of printing these photos, I decided to try my hand at painting them. There is a “thank you” that is due in here to my friend Jordan who helped me see the freedom in painting and also gave me a box of paints, brushes and some canvases to get started.
In the years since those early paintings of 2012 or so, I have created dozens of pieces based on my photos and also taught myself how to make jewelry, with the help of YouTube of course. It started with a childhood fascination with rocks and fossils in the creek bed behind my Southern Ohio home that I grew up in. Once in Austin, I took up wire wrapping using copper taken out of electrical wire and random crystals and tumbled stones I had, and that led to silver wire wraps, and eventually silversmithing using a torch and all kinds of tools to solder and create true heirloom jewelry.
My intrigue with stones grew, and I realized it was hard to find the right stones that had been cut into the best shapes to use for my jewelry, so I began studying the art of lapidary so that I could eventually create whatever shapes I wanted. The more I got into cutting stones, the more fascinated I became. The endless patterns and colors, and sometimes even landscapes, that can be found inside of natural rock is really mind blowing. This is where the stone photography facet of Fine Art Rocks came into being.
The stone photos combine my love of rocks and the natural patterns with my passion for landscape and scenery. Within these small stones there are entire worlds to be discovered, and when expanded to a larger visual scale they tap into something truly special within my imagination, and hopefully yours too. My goal is to show you art that is somehow familiar yet also new and exciting. Some stones are mainly abstract art, others are cosmic landscapes and distant alien horizons.
I hope you find the same kind of wonder and awe when experiencing these stone images that I have found, and also that my landscape paintings bring you joy or nostalgia or any sort of feeling that allows you to take a deep breath and relax for a moment.
Thank you for being here, and for appreciating artwork in all its forms. I hope you’ll browse around the Fine Art Rocks website and spend some quality time with these pieces, and please reach out with any questions or for any reason at all that you might want to chat!
Happy creating,
Sean
