Rebus Works will feature paintings by artist Matt Sesow for the month of November.  This work was created for and during The Opera Company of North Carolina’s production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni.   The opening reception will take on place on Friday, November 3rd as part of First Friday.  Sesow will be present from 6-10 pm and will give an artist lecture Saturday, November 4th at 4 p.m. with a question and answer period to follow.

For this particular body of work Sesow was approached by Founder and Artistic Director Robert Galbraith of OCNC to be a part of the performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.   Sesow painted five set backdrops in a day and half.  He also painted one 12-foot-by-7-foot canvas during the audience sitting before the performance, and during the 20 minute intermission he completed another large canvas for each night of the two night production. Sesow also donated two canvases to the OCNC for their annual auction.  “I let them choose which two they wanted and they picked Reality Theater and Hunted.”  They will be available from the OCNC at a future auction. 

Sesow, an ex-computer programmer who started painting in 1994 to impress a girl, fell in love with painting and has been obsessed with it since.  Sesow is truly an inspiring and prolific artist creating works that are raw and intensely expressive.  He uses bold paint colors and hard lines that are visually commanding.   Sesow’s paintings often have a language within themselves using symbols to describe an idea or feeling such as a bunny signifying innocence.

Sesow’s involvement with “Don Giovanni” is not his first foray into the performing arts.  In 2003, he created six large canvas paintings that were used as backdrop and inspiration for a month-long performance celebrating the life and accomplishments of Alfred Kinsey at the “Theatre of Note” in Hollywood. Read more about the show.

Also, in 2005 he was asked by a theater company in Phoenix to create a large canvas expressing his thoughts on the Iraq War.   The painting was used as the inspirational foundation by ten playwrights.  They each wrote plays relating to and reacting to my painting “Collateral Damage” (8’ x 9’ on canvas). Then during the month of April 2005, the plays were performed in front of the large painting which also acted as a backdrop.

View the painting at: http://www.sesow.com/paintings/jan2k5/hell.jpg
Read some press on it at:   http://sesow.com/cdpressrelease.htm

In September of this year Sesow received a letter from the nominating committee for the 2006 Wynn Newhouse Award.  It is a $50,000 prize to be awarded each year “to an artist of excellence who also has a disability”.  It is a nomination-only award, so he was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by the judges.  He should know by the end of November if he has been selected as a finalist.

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