As a kid growing up in Bradford, Pennsylvania, Sean Huntington knew he wanted to be an artist, and things haven’t changed. “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” says the young artist, surrounded by his vibrant watercolors.
While Sean exceled at math and science, art was always his passion. He benefited from going to a high school with a strong art program, but is primarily self-taught and has drawn inspiration from other area artists, including Thomas Paquette of Warren, Pennsylvania and Mikel Wintermantel of Allegany, New York. Their success strengthened his belief that one doesn’t have to live in a big city in order to make a living as an artist.
Sean graduated from high school and got a job to pay the bills, but continued honing his skills as a painter and eventually started showing his work locally. After some successful shows and participating in art festivals, along with encouragement and support from the Cattaraugus County Arts Council, Sean quit his job in 2007 and began painting full time and doing festivals up and down the East Coast.
Besides a few brief stints living in Pittsburgh and Indiana, Pennsylvania, Sean has always lived in this part of the country. His ancestors were some of the first Europeans in the area and that history means a lot to him, making him feel very closely connected to the landscape here, which is evident in his work. Sean is primarily a landscape painter known for his large-scale watercolor portraits of trees and the abstract shapes created by them. If you stop by his latest exhibit – “A Walk Among the Hills” – at Holiday Valley’s Tamarack Club in Ellicottville, the subjects will likely look very familiar to you.
“A Walk Among the Hills” features some of Sean’s most recent paintings, which are based on the landscape of Holiday Valley Resort and its surroundings. Sean may not be a skier, but with pieces such as Tannenbaum Spruces, Below Mardis Gras and Holiday Valley Drive, his stunning watercolors will strike a chord with area locals and seasonal residents alike.
When asked what other landscapes he hopes to capture one day, Sean stays true to his roots. He’s interested in the “bigger, taller, moodier” aspects of the Pacific Northwest, but remains “deeply connected to this area. In a lot of ways, this makes [his] work autobiographical.”
Today Sean lives in Allegany and will soon be moving to Great Valley. His exhibit at the Tamarack Club runs until February 22, and he won’t be slowing down any time soon after. With a grand opening slated for Saturday, February 25 from 6:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m., Sean and regional artists Nance Jackson and Barbara Fox will be showing their work at “Mill Street Gallery and Studios,” a new studio featuring workspace for all three artists as well as a gallery showroom of their work. The gallery will be located at 42 Mill St. in Ellicottville. For more information, visit Sean’s web site at www.seanstrees.com or call him directly at (716) 244-3806.
