Juror’s Choice Award — Viewpoint Gallery, Schenectady, NY

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Photographed by Matt Sesow from his press packets, October 18, 2026; text transcribed from the photos by Claude.

The 5th Annual View Point Gallery 2003 ACQUISITIONS EXHIBITION by Artists with Disabilities
Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital, 1270 Belmont Avenue, Schenectady, New York 12308, (518) 382-4500, www.sunnyview.org

AWARDS CONTINUED
Juror's Choice
Matt Sesow
Washington, DC

Matt Sesow is an artist who creates paintings as continued evidence of being and the ongoing process of maneuvering existence. One feels that Sesow forges his paintings as much as caresses them. The directness of his approach attempts to make painting and feeling one in the same. Sesow's approach is consciously without particular "style" or aesthetic strategy. He is self-taught, and prefers to work quickly. In 2001, Sesow confided to Brutarian magazine: "I really wouldn't characterize what I do as the art of the disabled. I use the pain of my loss to help with other themes. Every painting's a failure in a certain sense. I find myself using my lack of ability to bring out the intensity and power I'd like to think I possess." That power, and being unsure, manifests a deeply human aspect of existence, one that many of us have buried in our efforts to feign equanimity.

– Jim Richard Wilson, 2003
Director, Opalka Gallery

[Pasted artist bio:]
Matt Sesow, Washington, DC, took best-of-show honors at last year's ViewPoint Gallery exhibition. A self-taught artist, Matt lost his left arm during a childhood accident when a plane's propeller severed his hand—and he had been left-handed until that time. Following his graduation from the University of Tulsa, he went to work for IBM, which brought him to the nation's capitol. While he was working with computers, he decided to begin painting and is now a full-time artist. "Most of my work deals with disability and trauma suffered by a variety of people and animals," he notes. His work has become part of several September 11-related exhibitions because of the way he handles disability and trauma. He regularly paints for eight hours a day and posts images of his paintings on his Web site for others to see. He told a reporter from The Current, a Washington, DC-based weekly newspaper, that many of the artists he met when he first began painting have moved on. "They tell their story and they stop," he says. "I think my art is interesting beyond who I am."