Cody Seekins

Cody Seekins



Cody Seekins was born in Jamestown, North Dakota in 1977 and then quickly relocated to live in Kaiserslautern, Germany at a few months old; initiating his childhood as a military brat. By high school graduation Cody had lived in over seven United States, in addition to Italy, and a second tour in Germany.

Cody’s interest in fine art began through concurrent influences; the cover art of fantasy and science fiction novels which enthralled his imagination, and the saturation of cultural history woven into the fabric of European society. As a boy living in Naples, Italy, his mother took private painting lessons from a professional Neapolitan artist, introducing into the home a crucial sense of personal relevance to the arts.

As a late teenager and young adult Cody became hooked into art making as a platform for psychological exploration. Shortly thereafter he attended Wichita State University in Kansas where he earned his B.A. in Studio Art. During his tenure Cody was awarded a Freeman Asia grant used to live in Bangkok, Thailand for 6 months; traveling throughout the region and studying Buddhist Institutions at Thammasat University.

Between earning his bachelor’s degree and submitting to attend the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California, Cody lived in Frederick, Maryland, where he was accepted into faculty at both the Delaplaine Center for Visual Arts Education and Frederick Community College.

In May 2013 Cody earned his MFA in Figurative Painting from AAU.


Artist Statement
My interest in painting sources from a recapitulative process; using personal experience, identities, revelation, and reflections across time to build novel images. To this end I have found my education on Theravada Buddhism to be a fascinating and relevant system. I focus on treating impressions of my life in a similar vein as the stories of the Gautama Buddha prior to reaching enlightenment, as described in The Jātaka tales of Buddhism.

The Jātaka tales are an interesting collection of allegories in how they recognize the subject’s direction toward enlightenment yet center on the narrative of the self as manifest identities and egos working out the karma, or groundwork, which precedes. This framework allows me to build a body of paintings pulling from both my exterior and interior life. The modus operandi, therefore, concerns the illustration of abstract psychological objects and relationships through figurative and comparatively concrete forms. Ultimately this means I am building my own contemporary Jātakas.