Seth Haverkamp

Seth Haverkamp is a figurative painter who paints portraits and still lifes. His four children are continuous sources of inspiration.

Haverkamp uses a limited palette. Red, blue, yellow, purple, cadmium orange, and white. He uses pure color as often as he can instead of mixing. This is how the figures seem to come alive on the canvas. Even without a light source shining directly on the surface, there is a glow that emanates from his paintings. Haverkamp starts out very loose and stays loose for as long as he can. It’s when he moves up to the face that it starts to get tighter. He believes hands should always be included in the portrait. They are just as unique and important as the face.

The artist has created many commissioned portraits and uses live models, but his chief subject and love is his children. They always take him to new heights of creativity and beauty. He is influenced by the renowned American realist painter Andrew Wyeth and by Viennese Secessionist painter Gustav Klimt (which is especially clear in Haverkamp’s dappled multicolor backgrounds). Haverkamp’s paintings are imaginative, full of passion and emotion. His paintings push beyond portraiture to convey a narrative with an element of intrigue. As for the meaning of the work, Haverkamp states, "The meaning? It is found in beauty. At the moment, that's enough".

Haverkamp received the Portrait Society of America’s International Competition Draper Grand Prize in 2019 for Mars Rising, a painting of his son in front of a full-length mirror holding a string of origami birds. A portrait of his daughter Echo earned him Best in Show in the 2008 competition. Haverkamp was awarded a Certificate of Excellence in the Portrait Society’s 2011 show. He won the “People’s Choice Award” in 2013 for a painting of his daughter Essie as well as “Top Honors” in the same competition in 2013 and 2014. Seth was also a finalist and received an award from the 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 Art Renewal Center’s international painting competition in the portraits category.

Haverkamp was born in Syracuse, NY but grew up in eastern Tennessee. He opens his home-based studio for classes and demonstrations weekly and travels around the United States to teach workshops.