Sean Mahan is a social realist figurative painter who works with graphite and acrylic washes on wood to depict a sense of wonder about the innate warmth of the human character and its conflict with structures of power and control. This latest series, “Hemmed-In”, painted in predominantly pink hues, explores the roles we inhabit and the environmental conditions that cause us to be “hemmed in”. Sometimes we are coerced by the necessity of our condition. Sometimes we are hiding within a role, like a thread with which we hold on to the world when we have lost direct contact with it. And sometimes, it seems possible to create a new and unique path where the threads of conditioning and convention have been cut. Like the quiet and soft colors repeatedly used in the paintings, there is something quiet and sweet within us beneath our roles and our environmental constraints. And hopefully, we can choose to follow that thread and actively form a new fabric of possibility that is sweet, enriching, and beautiful.