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"Seeman’s Sights" by Catherine Mc Elrath Ocean Drive magazine-April 1995

Artist Joseph Seeman’s world view is a bit different than most. To paint what he sees, you’d have to filter subversive subculture overtones through a brain farm-fed on KISS records and schlock Seventies TV. Add kitschy cartoon colors, sardonic twists and shocking subject matter and you may have something close to Seeman’s work. Or maybe not.

Seeman’s paintings are bold and appealingly weird, a combination of world-weariness and wide-eyed wonder that makes unlikely icons out of burlesque queens, Mexican wrestlers, drunks, barflies and S&M devotees. A native Miamian and refugee of Kendall, Joseph spent his high school years drawing what he calls "real regular stuff," but when a prospective career as a bass player for a hard-core band beckoned, he abandoned fine arts for performing.

It wasn’t until 1991 that he returned to painting, and since then he’s been wowing the local arts scene with his innovative renderings of the seedy side of life. Shows and openings came quickly; his work has been in galleries and clubs around South Florida (his paintings have been carried by gallery of the Unknown Artist since 1992), on CD covers (for local hard-core bands Cell 63 an the Holy Terrors) and he’s become a local favorite for those with artistic tastes that run toward the, well, unusual. " I wanted to bridge the gap for people my age, create art that they can relate to. I also wanted to see how much I could get away with and still have people accept it," Seeman admits. "That’s the combination that makes me do what I do now-youth and outrage." Designer Anna Sui has even picked up one of his designs, a menacingly campy devil and bondage girl, for a T-shirt.

Seeman’s work may not hang in the stuffier galleries of South Florida, but his paintings now sell for some serious money (anywhere from $600 to $2,000). He’s a prolific worker, turning out from four to five paintings a month ("Some I like better than others, and when I sell ones I really like, I try to visit where they are") and he’s looking to exhibit those works in more mainstream galleries.

"Ultimately, I’d really like to be in the Whitney, in the established art world," says Seeman. "As more galleries take more risks, younger under-recognized artists can have their chance. I have nothing against showing my work in clubs, but my paintings always come back smelling like smoke."