"That’s the kind of beauty I’m still chasing now."

Great artists make artists. And to prove that point, over 70 of today's greatest have contributed their work in support of Children's Museum of the Arts' Emergency Arts Education Fund, establishing utterly ambitious art programs in New York City schools that need them most.

Bidding for the online auction concludes Thursday, October 19 at 12 PM EDT. Bid now. Bid often. Bid here.

Below, meet auction artist (and CMA Executive Director!) Seth Cameron.

Seth as a young artist

Can you describe a formative experience visiting a museum or gallery?

The closest art museum where I grew up was a half hour drive from my house, the Greenville County Museum of Art. Somewhere inside is a Kenneth Noland painting, a square canvas, raw with a black vertical ellipse, surrounded by two bands, one pink, one lavender or blue. I must have been 8 or 9 when I first saw it. By then I was already sure I was an artist, but what did I know about Kenneth Noland? I’d never heard the name Clement Greenberg, or the term “post-painterly abstraction.” I was just the kid who got in trouble for selling Ninja Turtle drawings to my friends for their lunch money. 

It wasn’t that I found the painting ‘beautiful’ in the typical transcendental sense of the word. But it piqued my curiosity. What was the painting doing? What is that sense of pulsing solidity? What are the arguments that get you from square to ellipse? From matte black to color to raw material? 

Now, without having seen it in the flesh in thirty years, the painting is still working on me, still piquing my curiosity. That’s the kind of beauty I’m still chasing now.

Seth Cameron

The Tourist

sumi on linen

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