Seth Jennemann

Seth Jennemann grew up in an environment where art and culture were present but unceremonious. Museums and concerts were part of life, not elevated or romanticized. You went, you looked, some things stayed with you, most didn’t. That normalcy shaped how he approaches art now, as something integrated into living rather than separated from it.

The moment that fundamentally shifted his relationship to making came with the death of his father. After his father passed, Jennemann discovered an old sketchbook filled with drawings and poems that had never been shared. That quiet, private record of creativity became a catalyst. Within days of finding it, he began drawing, and he has been making art consistently for nearly two decades since. What started as a response to loss became a lifelong practice.

Jennemann has no formal education in art or writing. Writing, for him, is inseparable from thinking. It is simply how he speaks internally, transferred to the page. Visual art required a different kind of learning. He taught himself to draw and paint through obsessive repetition, trial and error, and thousands of hours watching online tutorials. That self-directed education shaped both his technical fluency and his independence from prescribed models of how art should be made.

His practice includes drawing, painting, writing, character-building, and world-building. Much of the work centers on a fictional universe he calls MEFREEK, a space populated by recurring characters and narratives that evolve across media. Alongside the finished work exists a large archive of drawings and paintings that will never be shown. What viewers encounter is a curated selection, not a complete record, and Jennemann is deliberate about that distinction.

Experimentation is driven by curiosity rather than strategy. He creates imagined characters, builds environments for them to exist in, and writes stories that accompany the images. Humor plays a critical role, often functioning as a defensive mechanism rather than relief. Recurring themes include loss, anxiety, control, fragility, power, identity, and the tension between wanting to escape and wanting to belong. His work frequently explores the systems people construct to survive themselves, as well as the contrast between introspection and its absence.

Jennemann is wary of art that takes itself too seriously or strains to appear important. He believes humor does not invalidate meaning, just as seriousness does not guarantee truth. His themes emerge from lived experience and observation, shaped by the people he has encountered and the contradictions he has witnessed.

His process is fluid but structured. A piece often begins with an idea or theme, followed by research and sketching. If a sketch holds, it may become a finished drawing. Paintings usually come later. Hundreds of drawings exist in a mental queue, waiting to be developed, though new work frequently cuts the line when something feels urgent. Stories and titles almost always come after the image is finished. Writing them is less about explanation and more about closure, a way of knowing the work is complete so he can move on.

Inspiration comes from observing people and behavior rather than from places or objects. His days are spent in his studio, also called MEFREEK, working across drawing, painting, and writing depending on instinct and momentum. Creative blocks arise from indecision, not lack of ideas. His solution is simple: make a decision and move forward.

The greatest challenge in his creative life is time. There will never be enough of it to make everything he wants to make. That awareness drives his pace and focus.

Success, for Jennemann, is not external. It is defined by still wanting to create and still being able to. He measures fulfillment by continuity rather than recognition. As long as the work continues, the practice is alive.

Looking forward, his focus remains unchanged. He continues to expand the MEFREEK universe, developing new characters, new stories, and new finished works. There is no pivot planned, only forward motion.