Charleston, SC  [American]

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Sean Gallagher has been traveling around the US and beyond with his trusty companion, a drawing pad, ever since childhood. Born in Chicago and then, following the trajectory of his parents’ careers, his family shuffled south to Cincinnati, relocated to a college town in eastern Kansas, and after leaving Lawrence behind he eventually settled in Los Angeles. Doodling whatever popped into his mind carried him through long periods spent in the backseat of cars and strapped into airline seats with nothing more than imagination and music blasting through headphones.

As an only child traveling with academic parents on sabbaticals and consulting trips with universities across Europe, Australia and beyond, a major highlight was his father’s enthusiasm for seeking out the smallest and most obscure museums to visit. Standouts like visiting the little yellow cafe in Arles, of Van Gogh’s “Café Terrace at Night” fame left an indelible imprint.

 “My parents encouraged my creativity and involved me in several activities to help this side flourish, whether that was drawing or ceramics or painting or writing or photography, I was given the room and support for the imaginative roots to take and the time for artistic qualities to bloom and thrive. They also introduced me to painters, photographers, and filmmakers that’d go on to influence the art I created and the outlook I used to interpret the world. People like Rene Magritte, Amedeo Modigliani, Diane Arbus, Edward Gorey, and Stanley Kubrick, to name a few.”

With dreams of writing, Sean studied journalism at Wabash College of Indiana, and at University College of Dublin in Ireland. Reporting crime from Hong Kong in the mid aughts, he followed counterfeit stories (20% of all airplane parts were counterfeit!), had a turn reporting for a school bus industry magazine, music reporting in Ireland, and wrote profiles all along the way. Journalism, however, did not maintain the spark that trips with his sketchbook and expeditions to overlooked museums had held. In 2008, when the journalism industry conglomerated and advertising dried up, drawing continued to grow from a hobby into a passion. Shifting his focus to art, with all of these experiences to tap into, provided a major breakthrough. He considers the Diane Arbus quote, “A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know. The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way” a guiding maxim.

Since shifting careers, his work has appeared in a number of shows and publications, receiving awards and recognitions, including Charleston Magazine’s ‘Top 10 List’ of emerging local artists. He enjoys a new-found satisfaction in sharing his artwork, sharing his viewpoint through the visual medium, and constantly learning about the industry and his contemporaries.

Having called many cities and countries home over the years exposed him to a broad cross-section of, and appreciation for, different cultures. In turn, these experiences fostered his stylistic growth while the underpinning remains motivated by the same aspirations that he admires in Arbus, and many other great artists: To make life’s in-between moments, those scenes often overlooked and disregarded as piffle, beautiful.

Sean called the West Coast his home for two decades before finally landing in Charleston, SC where he lives with his wife, two kids, three cats, and one dog.