Ambition and Seatton
At Artbox we aim to be ambitious on behalf of the artists who come to our studio. We work to increase the opportunities for the artists, in line with their needs and goals, with an aim to raise their aspirations and develop their skills. This is underpinned by a desire to increase the visibility of artists with learning disabilities and autistic artists.
In 2023, Seatton was commissioned to create album artwork for Brit Award nominated artist CMAT. Seatton has a highly distinct and expressive way of depicting the world, within his work objects, space and figures are rendered in a strange and singular way. Seatton is testament to the fact that neurodivergent artists have a distinctive and valuable creative vision, which in this case led to extremely unique album artwork.
CMAT found that Seatton was a perfect match for her vision of the album artwork - the commission became a collaboration between her world of songs and Seatton’s vision of people and spaces imagined through his works on paper. Seatton and CMAT both drew inspiration from Art Nouveau, as well as musical and dancing figures; his artwork for the album perfectly captured CMAT’s reference images capturing a whirlwind of spinning dancing figures throughout the ages.
In addition to being an opportunity for Seatton to develop new artwork, it has also been an opportunity for people all over the world to see his artwork on the cover of vinyl or CDs or through streaming CMAT’s music. A real highlight of this was to see Graham Norton holding a vinyl with Seatton’s artwork on it on TV!
CMAT kindly invited Artbox, Seatton and his family to join her at her album launch at Rough Trade East. Seatton is interested in the stage, often drawing inspiration from theatrical productions, so it was particularly exciting for Seatton to see his artwork used as a backdrop for CMAT’s performance. The Artbox team were really pleased to see how proud Seatton’s parents were of him. We are so pleased that we could facilitate this wonderful opportunity for him.