Sean Cairns is a wanderer by nature. The trait carries over from childhood when he spent endless hours exploring and getting lost in the woods, both on his own or with his family, who loved hunting for Morel mushrooms together. Cairns vividly recalls everyone spreading out to search for these treasures and the solemn moments that followed, seeing and being seen by the natural world around him. A jubilant call would inevitably echo through the forest, signaling that someone had found a patch, breaking the magic communion and fueling his desire for more of this connection.

Now living and working in Dallas, TX, where he exists without a car, Cairns walks and bikes everywhere in the city. The thrill of nature still pulls him, leading to hikes in local creeks and time spent in the few remaining wooded areas in the sprawling metroplex. Moments of serene beauty are found here, even with manmade litter like abandoned lawn chairs wrestling with the sanctity of these places. The scenes encountered are meditative for the artist, and they are often immortalized in the form of impressionistic paintings created from memory, using distemper and oil paint mixed with sand and other detritus gathered on his hikes.

The use of distemper, a historical medium requiring quick applications of heated rabbit skin glue mixed with pigments, has become a ritual for the artist. The process helps get Cairns into the groove, as the expressive sketches and initial layers of glue are painted on the fly at high speed. Interestingly, the medium also functions as a primer and binder for his textural additives on the canvas, which add definition and surface to his atmospheric visual language. When dry, more direct and considered layers of oil paint are applied over the more intuitive underpainting, bringing everything into focus.

Light bearer, Cairns’ debut solo exhibition in New York City, is a dedication and love letter to nature and all of its infinite wonder and transformative potential.

Sean Cairns (b. 1988, Sparta, IL) received a BFA in Sculpture at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (2011) and an MFA in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2014). Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include 12.26, Dallas, TX (2023, 2024); Valley House Gallery, Dallas, TX (2021, 2023). In 2024, Cairns’ work was acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art for their permanent collection.