Biography
Robert Seabeck works within a tradition of realism that has been a strong direction historically in American art. His subjects include landscapes, wildlife, flowers and vehicles. Born in Casper, Wyoming, Seabeck attended four colleges majoring in art at each. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at California State in Long Beach and his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Wyoming in Laramie in 1976. Seabeck’s interest in light, color and sculpturesque form led him to begin his series on cars and trucks in the mid-1970’s. The smooth rounded contours of the vehicles are not unlike those of the human figure. The vehicles’ shiny surfaces, however, distort reflections, shadow and color, and it is these shapes and diverse hues that that Seabeck seeks to capture on canvas. Seabeck pursues visual challenges in a highly focused style, which appears to depict things as they are, in the manner of modern realists. He disclaims himself as a photo-realist, preferring to describe himself as a photo-expressionist. Rather than painting in every detail, the artist subjectively includes and excludes specific elements, often reducing backgrounds to a blur of painterly strokes.
From 1978 to 1992, Seabeck served as an artist-in-residence for the Wyoming Arts Council, and has demonstrated painting at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody for the past eleven years. His art is displayed in a number of corporate and private collections and museums including the El Paso Museum of Art, the University of Wyoming, the Wyoming State Museum at Cheyenne, the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody.