“Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow,” Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries, Old Dominion University, Norfolk…

Full text

Text taken from the saved copy (where a page was only an image, it was machine-read and may contain errors — check against the page image before quoting). Copyright remains with the original publisher; kept for the historical record.

THINGS TO DO  ENTERTAINMENT

Artist uses pain and history for new
exhibition at ODU; show includes 13
pieces by famed painter Jean-Michel
Basquiat
By SALEEN MARTIN | Staff writer

PUBLISHED: September 1, 2021 at 12:44 PM EDT | UPDATED: September 2, 2021 at 1:10 PM
EDT

The latest exhibition at the Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries at Old Dominion
University feels like stepping into a children’s book.
Contorted animals with surgical scars, planes and wind socks are sketched onto the walls
as if by a child with a painful past. Between the drawings are formalized paintings such as
a portrait of jazz great Louis Armstrong and illustrations of trains and mermaids, which
feel like a portal to formative elementary school years.
While the gallery feels playful and nostalgic, several of the works by artist Matt Sesow are
indeed the result of trauma.
When he was 8, Sesow was playing with friends in a rural Nebraska airfield when he was
hit by the propeller of a landing airplane. His left arm was severed below the elbow.
Sesow discovered his love for art in 1994 after years of working as a software tester. Art
became his way to heal and express the pain that followed the accident. He is, at 55, a
self-taught artist.
His show, “Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow,” opened Tuesday and runs through Dec.
18. It contains nearly 400 works, including wall drawings and paintings inspired by his
weeklong residency in Norfolk this spring. Also in the show are 13 originals from the
iconic neo-expressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died at 27 in 1988.

Cullen Strawn, executive director for the arts and director of the galleries, developed the
exhibition and included Basquiat because Sesow’s work resembles his, with its bold lines
and bright colors.
This is the first time these Basquiat pieces have been publicly displayed, Strawn said.
Sesow was already painting like the New York-based Basquiat before he learned of his
work. The two artists share other similarities.
Untitled, 1981 by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Paint on MDF board. 16 x 12 inches. From the Collection
of David Liebman. The piece is on display through Dec. 18 at Old Dominion University’s Baron
and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries as part of the “Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow” exhibition.
“Model Runway” 2005 by Matt Sesow. Acrylic/mixed on watercolor board. 15 x 20 inches. The
piece will be on display from Aug. 31 to Dec. 18, 2021 at Old Dominion University’s Baron and
Ellin Gordon Art Galleries as part of the “Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow” exhibition.

Strawn said Basquiat was 8 when he was hit by a car while playing in the street. He was
severely injured. His mother brought him a copy of Gray’s Anatomy, the medical
reference, which gave him anatomical ideas he used in his art.
“When we get over to the Basquiats, you’ll see dissected heads and missing limbs and
things like that,” Strawn said during a tour of the Sesow show. “I wonder if in the human
mind, there’s not something to do with severe childhood trauma that manifests in
expression in particular ways.”
Sesow saw the 1996 movie “Basquiat,” which starred Jeffrey Wright as Basquiat and David
Bowie as his artist friend Andy Warhol.
In one scene, Basquiat barged in on Warhol, threw some of his work at him and asked if
Warhol wanted to pay $10 for it. Sesow said the scene inspired him to create more work;
he now paints full time from his base in Washington, D.C., and is pretty prolific. He’s
created more than 17,000 pieces
To add context to the show, Strawn compiled hours of music that plays quietly
throughout the gallery, including the fast, punk, hardcore, free jazz and early ska music
Sesow listens to when he is painting. Basquiat preferred bebop, which is loud and fast,
Strawn said. Still, that’s another similarity between the artists — they both liked music
some people deem “noise.”
The exhibition includes a touch-screen display case that allows users to interact with
three booklets in the gallery, including a handwritten and illustrated one that chronicles
Sesow’s love story with his wife, artist Dana Ellyn.
Guests can view and flip through the pages on the screen. The display, called a MagicBox,
also plays a time-lapse video of Sesow painting Armstrong playing trumpet. The painting
was inspired by the Attucks Theatre in Norfolk and its history.

The exhibition spans Sesow’s career, including works from when he first picked up a
paintbrush. He started as a hobby and realized, as he described in his artist statement,
that painting was “a new language to express feelings felt but never shared.”
His work initially focused heavily on his disability. His focus has shifted, he said while
giving a tour of the exhibition through a telepresence robot.
“I don’t approach the disability issue quite as much now as I did back when I started
because it was kind of a healing process of documenting what those emotions meant to
me and kind of shelving them aside on a painting,” he said. “The recovery through art is
ongoing.”
That became evident one day while he worked on “Life and Limb” in Norfolk. Strawn was
filming him as he painted and drew.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed, and Strawn went to check on him.
“My wife doesn’t even know this,” Sesow recalled telling him. “I just realized why I use so
little brown in my paintings — it’s because the airplane that hit me was brown!”
Sesow called it “therapy through art.”
During his one-week residency in May, he used the old Jimmy John’s on Monarch Way as
his studio. He spent mornings walking and looking for inspiration, then more than 10
hours some days listening to music and painting parts of Norfolk history.
One piece, “Underground Railroad,” depicts 30 brown figures staring blankly ahead.
Above them, a train goes by. Behind the train is a diagram of sorts. An arrow points to the
name George Latimer, who escaped slavery in Norfolk through the Underground
Railroad. From his name, another arrow points to the name of his son, Lewis Latimer, and
then to a light bulb. The younger Latimer was an assistant to Alexander Graham Bell,
who invented the telephone. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Latimer also improved Thomas Edison’s light bulb.
Sesow even made some of his pieces with coal from the Lamberts Point Coal Terminal. He
even took some of the coal home.
“I still have it,” Sesow said, smiling and holding up a piece to the camera. “I was really,
really excited to do this. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried working with these materials.”
The Norfolk show is important to him for several reasons.
Baron and Ellin Gordon were some of the first to buy his art, which meant a lot to the new
artist. The show is also his largest.
“It’s just a very solid show that encompasses so many different aspects of art that I’ve
been in,” he said. “I’m just super excited to see the show myself.”

Saleen Martin, 757-446-2027, saleen.martin@pilotonline.com

___
If you go
When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays through Dec. 18
Where: Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries, 4509 Monarch Way, Norfolk
Cost: Free
Details: 757-683-6271, tinyurl.com/mattsesow or gordongalleries@odu.edu
“Mermaid,” 2021 by Matt Sesow. Acrylic/mix on stretched canvas. 36 x 24 inches. From the
Collection of Lewis Francis. The piece will be on display from Aug. 31 to Dec. 18, 2021 at Old
Dominion University’s Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries as part of the “Life and Limb: Works
by Matt Sesow” exhibition.

MORE FROM OUR NEWSROOM

2021 
September 
1

Full text

Text taken from the saved copy (where a page was only an image, it was machine-read and may contain errors — check against the page image before quoting). Copyright remains with the original publisher; kept for the historical record.

Menu  ()

(/)

 ()

New Exhibition at Gordon Art
Galleries Illustrates Healing Power
of Art

 August 20, 2021

Share









By Amy Matzke-Fawcett
(mailto:amatzkef@odu.edu)
Matt Sesow wasn't always a painter; he discovered his passion in 1994 while working at IBM, eventually leaving his
career in computers to become a full-time artist in 2001. But by his estimates, he's sold more than 17,000 works, due
to his emotional, joyful and in his words, "obsessive" painting.
"Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow" will be on display from Aug. 31 to Dec. 18 at the Baron and Ellin Gordon Art
Galleries on Monarch Way at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. The show spans Sesow's career as a self-taught
artist, featuring works inspired by friendship with Baron and Ellin Gordon, and his world travels and residencies,
including a recent week spent in Norfolk.
Early works helped him deal with the personal trauma of losing his left arm at age 8 after being hit by the propeller of
an airplane. He expanded to painting what inspires him, from "trauma icons" to friends' Instagram posts to war. The
paintings, he said, help to calm his fears and nightmares from the accident.
Sesow and wife Dana Ellyn are both full-time painters living in Washington, D.C. While the show in the Gordon Galleries
is a solo exhibition of Sesow's work, the two also did a collaborative three-day show and artist talk in August at Vibrant
Shore Brewing in Virginia Beach, and a one-week residency in Norfolk in May, supported by the Rutter Art Foundation,
the University's Real Estate Foundation, Arts@ODU, and the Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries. During that time,

Sesow walked the city for inspiration, then returned to a temporary studio space to create works for the upcoming

Menu
 () in
()
show. Residencies are a technique Sesow has used to create in the past, finding inspiration while
painting
Costa

(/)

Rica, Spain, and California, among others.
"I pretty much get up in the morning, walk around and get inspired by maybe going to a market or seeing a
newspaper," he said. "Painting takes a lot of time, and I've got to hit it when it's just right because I can't just turn on
the good emotional stuff."
Sesow's work is also highly influenced by Jean-Michel Basquiat, the artist who rose to fame in the 1980s for bold and
colorful works. A number of Basquiat's early works will be on display in the Galleries to complement "Life and Limb"
and demonstrate influence.
Sesow has also incorporated a physical piece of Norfolk. Cullen Strawn, the University's executive director for the arts,
procured and overnighted 13 pounds of coal from the Norfolk Southern Lambert's Point Yard, with the help of David
Goode, retired chairman, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corporation. Sesow then ground the coal with a
mortar and pestle to make paint used to create several works for the show. Ellyn has also incorporated the coal paint
into her recent works.
"This is no ordinary exhibition, and it is on the other end of the spectrum from boring - you really need to stand in the
space and see the writing, painting, and drawing all over the walls in addition to the works shown together, and hear
some of the music Matt listens to in headphones while painting to understand just how impactful it is," Strawn said.
"Matt has collectors around the world, and guests worldwide can visit the show by using our telepresence robot
named Gordon."
In-person guests can interact with the Galleries' MagicBox to read illustrated love-story booklets by Sesow and see a
timelapse video of him painting Louis Armstrong playing trumpet in honor of Norfolk's Attucks Theatre history. The
MagicBox, new to the Gordon Galleries this year, is an interactive display case with a transparent touch screen allowing
interaction with multimedia content.
The Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries exhibit works by nationally and internationally recognized self-taught artists,
contemporary artists working in all media, and local and regional artists connected with Old Dominion University. Free
and open to the public, with parking in the 45th Street garage. Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more
information on this exhibition and talks and events with Sesow, visit odu.edu/arts/galleries
(https://odu.edu/life/culture/arts/galleries), follow the galleries at @gordonartgalleries on Facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/GordonArtGalleries), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/gordonartgalleries/) and
YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ9Q-Zp9N3pfoGLKyjBqfYQ/videos), or call (757) 683-6271. More of
Sesow's work is also available on sesow. (https://www.sesow.com/)com (https://www.sesow.com/).

Related News Stories

(/news/2021/8/first_get_advisory_d)

ODU Designated as a
First-gen Forward
Advisory Institution
(/news/2021/8/first_get_adv
The recognition comes from the
Center for First-generation Student
Success. (More)
(/news/2021/8/first_get_advisory_d)

(/news/2021/8/competitions)

(/news/2021/7/arts)

Engineering Students
Persevere in Boat Race
(/news/2021/8/competition

ODU Renews Chrysler
Glass Partnership
(/news/2021/7/arts)

Neil St. Clair, Daniel Erdogan and

The partnership between Perry

Larry Price recently built and raced
an electric boat for the Promoting
Electric Propulsion (PEP) for Small
Craft competition. (More)
(/news/2021/8/competitions)

Glass Studio and ODU’s
Department of Art helps students
learn through a “fiery, molten lens.”
(More) (/news/2021/7/arts)

Menu  ()

Resources

(/)
(/)

 ()

Employment (/employment)

 5115 Hampton Blvd

Norfolk, VA 23529

Directories (/directory)
University Libraries (/library)
Alumni (/alumni)

(https://www.google.com/maps/place/Old+Dominion+University/@36.8853052,-76.3080633,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!
76.3058746)

 Contact

(/about/contact)

Legal
Legal & Compliance (/legal-compliance)
Privacy (/privacy)
Accessibility (/accessibility)



Health & Safety (/life/health-safety)

Emergency Management (/emergency)
(https://www.facebook.com/Old.Dominion.University/)


(https://twitter.com/odu)


Visit
Visit ODU (/visit-campus)
Transportation & Parking (/transportation-parking-services)

(https://www.instagram.com/olddominionu/)


Campus Map (/map)

(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNgsDl2hppmwMyGR2NmL9A)

(https://www.linkedin.com/school/olddominion-university/)

Copyright © Old Dominion University • Updated 2025
Choose Language

English

Full text

Text taken from the saved copy (where a page was only an image, it was machine-read and may contain errors — check against the page image before quoting). Copyright remains with the original publisher; kept for the historical record.

U

a

ART: For Life & Limb

(Trumpeting: “I created this painting at my studio in downtown Washington, D.C.
after a stay in Norfolk and learning about the history of the Attucks Theatre.” —
Matt Sesow)
By Betsy DiJulio
Everyone, it seems, has heard of Matt Sesow even if they don’t own a painting by him,
though it also seems everyone has one—or three—of those. And that is by design. As
Sesow says, since he makes his sole living by selling his art, he is fortunate that he enjoys
the marketing and selling as much as the making. With no painting priced over $1K and
most far less than that, the prices for these paintings are intentionally set within most
everyone’s reach. But their magnetic appeal extends far beyond their price tag.
If you ask some people how they ended up in their current line of work, they might joke, “I
lost a bet.” Sesow, however, might quip, “I got drunk.” In 1994 this university-educated
software developer/engineer, with a 10-year career working for industry giants like IBM,
picked up a paint brush with some art school friends and had a few beers. He painted

images from a local free paper in D.C. “making it up as I went along.” His version of therest-is-history? “Everyone else stopped and I kept going.”
By 1996, after continuing to paint and self-educate in D.C. museums—finding inspiration in
the likes of Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning—Sesow set up his work at a festival in
Georgetown, but sold nothing all day until the very end when a woman bought virtually
everything he had. She turned out to be an art dealer from Connecticut who carried his
work for a decade. That was the same year he saw the movie Basquiat about the short life
of world-renowned street artist Jean Michel Basquiat, a driving influence on him.
In 2001, Sesow left his computer career to paint full-time. Ultimately acknowledging that
art gallery goals “were different than mine,” he recognized his personal need to “keep
creative and keep relevant…without gallery deadlines and pressures.” He figured that his
work ethic, business experience, programming knowledge, marketing acumen, and origin
story would propel his career. And he was right, having spent recent decades developing
collectors around the world, exhibiting nationally and internationally in over 150 shows,
and selling to fans directly from his website, www.sesow.com. At last count, Sesow has
sold some 8,000 paintings.

(Underground Railroad: “I created this painting on the ODU campus while staying in
Norfolk, Virginia. It represents the history of Norfolk and how George Latimer escaped via
the underground railroad on a ship headed to Baltimore in 1842. Latimer had a son, Lewis
Howard Latimer, who went on to help discover and invent better filaments for the light
bulb, an evaporative air conditioner, and an improved toilet system for railroad cars.” —
Matt Sesow)

Recently, I was joined by the prolific and engaging artist in the Baron and Ellin Gordon
Galleries at ODU via Gordon, a telepresence robot, for a preview of Sesow’s upcoming
exhibition. Joining us for the gallery visit were Cullen Strawn, ODU’s executive director for
the arts and curator of the show, and David and Phil Liebman, collectors who lent work to
it.
Now about that origin story: Life and Limb is a direct reference to a childhood game turned
tragic one evening near an airfield in rural Nebraska. Someone would call out numbers,
and the kids raced for corresponding balls. Sesow, age 8, thought it would be a funny trick
on his friends to turn and run the opposite direction. And he did, running straight into the
moving propellor of an incoming plane that severed his left arm and ultimately cost him his
hand.
His paintings—bright, bold, and energetic—have been part of a healing journey. Some see
them as angry and aggressive, others as joyful and hopeful. Regardless, processing the
past while confronting the present—including politics—has resulted in a huge body of
widespread and wildly popular work. It is largely populated with human and animal
figures, recognizable for their style, color palette, “Sesow smiles,” and personal
iconography. For the ODU show, one group of paintings features mermaids or “sirens,”
ships, and captains. Though germane to the local community, these symbols carry both
personal and universal meaning. The captain, for instance, symbolizes for Sesow a positive
“taking control” and “forward-looking” stance.
Hand-drawn like custom wallpaper on the gallery walls are some of Sesow’s most
frequently used icons which also appear in the paintings, sometimes next to his signature
as a marker in time: trauma scars, bunnies bearing trauma scars, trauma cups—“pour bad
things in the cup and move on”—rising and descending phoenixes, one-winged birds, and
many more.
Find them all and lose yourself in Life and Limb this fall.

WANT TO SEE?
Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow
August 31 through December 18
Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries
Old Dominion University

ODU.edu, 757.683.6271

lees

Advertisement

ANRABESS Women’s Casual
Te
Pere

Summer Fashion
is Only a
Click Away!

amazon

NANT

[page 5 machine-read (OCR) from the image]

Summer Fashion


Copyright VEER Magazine • Site Design by GGD

Full text

Text taken from the saved copy (where a page was only an image, it was machine-read and may contain errors — check against the page image before quoting). Copyright remains with the original publisher; kept for the historical record.

7/3/26, 9:21 AM

Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow – Folk Art Society of America

Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow
Home » Events » Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow

LIFE AND LIMB: WORKS BY MATT SESOW
From August 31, 2021 to December 18, 2021

https://folkart.org/event/life-and-limb-works-matt-sesow/

1/4

7/3/26, 9:21 AM

Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow – Folk Art Society of America

Old Dominion University
4509 Monarch Way
Norfolk, VA 23529

CALENDAR

U

i E

t

https://folkart.org/event/life-and-limb-works-matt-sesow/

2/4

7/3/26, 9:21 AM

Upcoming Events

Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow – Folk Art Society of America

Current Events in the Northeast
Southeast
Midwest
Southwest
West
Europe and Elsewhere

Mission Statement

Opening Soon

Latest Issue

The Folk Art Society of America,
founded in 1987, is a nonprofit
organization that advocates the
documentation, preservation and
exhibition of folk art, folk artists
and folk art environments, with an
emphasis on the contemporary.
Our online Calendar lists current,
upcoming and ongoing folk-artrelated events and exhibitions.

2026 International Folk Art market

Until July 9, 2026

@ INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART
https://folkart.org/event/life-and-limb-works-matt-sesow/

3/4

7/3/26, 9:21 AM

Life and Limb: Works by Matt Sesow – Folk Art Society of America

MARKET CENTER
Santa Fe, New Mexico

[#116] Vol. 35, No. 2,
Fall 2025

Copyright © 2026 Folk Art Society of America | Powered by Astra WordPress Theme

https://folkart.org/event/life-and-limb-works-matt-sesow/

4/4