Sebastian Blanck | [Birds Chirping]

JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING – MAYA FRODEMAN GALLERY is pleased to present [Birds Chirping], a solo exhibition with artist Sebastian Blanck, on view at the gallery's downtown location from September 19^th through November 2^nd, 2025. An opening reception will be held Friday, September 19^th from 5 to 8pm. All are welcome to attend.

Sebastian Blanck’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, [Birds Chirping] introduces a lovingly executed body of work rendered in electric color. Drawing inspiration from his daily life, his family and friends, and most notably his wife and muse, fellow artist Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Blanck ventures beyond mere representation. As with birdsong in a closed-captioned film, [Birds Chirping] acts as a visual filter for the noise of modern living.

In painting idyllic scenes of a childhood spent in the outdoors—boys paddleboarding on a lake or adventuring far-off in the distance, dwarfed by trees—or Isca in her sunhat, surveying her garden, there is an earnest commitment to what the artist describes as “leaning into the more joyous moments.” Sebastian Blanck approaches his work as an artist as a visual diary of what happens in his family life and in his friends’ lives. In this lush world, abundance and gratitude permeate. Isca’s Summer Garden is not just a patch of dirt, rather a jungle of brilliantly hued foliage, nature’s bounty in veritable droves and luscious application of paint. Isca herself faces away from the viewer, dwarfed by her plants; one can almost hear her humming to herself (or birds, chirping). 

According to the artist, “There is something – I think—brave in painting your own life, and I’ve only come to realize this in the last few years, actually, because you have no idea where that is going to go. Because you have hopes and you have aspirations for where your life will lead, but life is definitely filled with surprises, and challenges, and being able to be steadfast, and continue to look for beauty among those challenges I think is really, really important.”

Of equal importance, Blanck excels in technical mastery of paint, swinging between the relative abstraction and visual complexity of the Sunhat images, and more traditional portraiture of Isca at her Piano. As curator, writer and art historian Matthew Israel wrote in 2023, “Upon first glance, Sebastian Blanck seems simply a painter of idyllic scenes. However, given the attention they deserve, Blanck’s works reveal a complex investment in formal experimentation, an unexpected tension between figuration and abstraction, and an engaging and unconventional approach to contemporary realism.”

The largest work, Isca at her Piano, feels central to the exhibition, despite its relative singularity within the whole. Here, Blanck introduces the direct and relaxed gaze of his wife in an intimate interior setting, legs comfortably crossed with stockinged feet, seated at her piano. Dappled light from an unseen window filters across her rumpled hair and streaks the floorboards. We are faced with an elemental vision of Isca as muse and human being, confident and complex at the center of the artist’s world. “There’s a stripped-back directness to it,” notes Blanck, who saw “an opportunity to go to the more traditional, classic side of image-making.” Distinctly contemporary, and exquisitely intimate in nature, it’s an electrifying portrait of Isca, so often the subject of Blanck’s work, but seen here as though for the first time.

Born in New Haven, CT in 1976, Blanck holds a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and was selected as a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2001. Widely recognized for his musical contributions in addition to his painting, Blanck has exhibited at galleries in the United States and Europe. His work has been reviewed in publications including New York Magazine, Artforum, Paper Magazine and The New Yorker. Sebastian Blanck currently lives and works in New York.