Sean McFarland (b. California, 1976) received a MFA from California College of the Arts, Oakland (2004) and a BS from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California (2002). His solo exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2017); Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York (2015); San Francisco Camerawork, San Francisco (2009), and White Columns, New York (2004). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (2018); George Eastman Museum, Rochester (2016); Aperture, New York (2014-15); and Bay Area Now 6, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2011). His work is in the permanent collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; George Eastman Museum; and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Francisco, and teaches at San Francisco State University.
Sean McFarland’s work explores the relationship between photography and the history and representation of landscape, exploring western landscapes and the skies above in particular. With a focus on experimentation, the artist joins aspects of other mediums with photography to uncover the experience of seeing, the passing of time, and the knowledge that we and what we know cannot live forever.
McFarland asks us as viewers to consider whether photographs make us pay more or less attention to the environment around us. Through alternative processes of photography such as cyanotypes—a photographic printing process that produces blue prints solely using coated paper and light, with no camera or negatives— there is a beautiful simplicity and purity in this representation of color and material. Plus, as McFarland says, with a touch of irreverence, “Blue is just the best color.” (SFMOMA, 2017).