Artists Statement:

My name is Seth Yavit and I hail from Annandale, VA.

I started painting with a needle tool in late 2008 when I bought oil paint, on a whim, from a homeless lady on Houston and 1st Ave in the East Village. The last time I had taken an art class was in high school 15 years earlier. I bought the oil paint that day to paint a gift for someone, but after I found my craft I stuck with it because oil paints are very beautiful to me.

I paint with a needle because it allows me to express what writing, improv, stand-up and even photography cannot, my ideas in a maximized way.

I used to see my ideas in writings and words, but that changed when I took up photography. It was photography that helped me learn to speak to myself in images as opposed to words.

I love using the needle tool because in doing so I need to place my face right up to the canvas. This means that even if I’m working on a piece that is as small as eight inches by ten inches, I become enveloped by the piece and I get to live inside it for a few hours.

Using the needle tool is also soothing for me. The combination of being enveloped by my creation and staring at a quick moving needle tool puts me into a trance every time. There is nothing I like more than creating pictures with super small details, like far away clouds or fires on mountains in the distance. A lot of the time I try and make it so you can only ‘kind of’ see things, even if you are standing up close. I like to think that standing five feet away from my work has the same effect as standing 20 feet away from other artists paintings.