John Seed

John Seed is a professor emeritus of art and art history at Mt. San Jacinto College. Always creative, Seed remembers painting a red airplane to impress his kindergarten teacher and grew up giving puppet shows, building model airplanes and customizing Volkswagens. During and after his college years Seed’s life in art was shaped by interactions with remarkable artists including Nathan Oliveira, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Diebenkorn. While attending Stanford Seed was an intern to the art collectors Hunk and Moo Anderson. After graduate work in art at UC Berkeley he worked for the art dealer Larry Gagosian and then became the first bookstore manager of MOCA (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles). During his 35+ year teaching career Seed taught Studio Art and Art History at Mt. San Jacinto College, Introduction to Modernism at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and Theory and Criticism in the MFA program at Laguna College of Art and Design. Now a noted art writer and independent curator, Seed's writings have appeared in The HuffingtonPost, Hyperallergic, International Artist, American Art Collector, Arts of Asia, and other fine publications. His 2019 book Disrupted Realism: Paintings for a Distracted World features the works of 38 contemporary artists who add subjectivity and disruption to their imagery. His second book, More Disruption: Representation in Flux was released in 2023. Seed has lived in Cambria since 2018 with his wife Linda and two younger daughters Evan and Condee. Since 2014 he has served on the board of the Sam Francis Foundation which represents the art and legacy of the Abstract Expressionist artist Sam Francis. Between 2021 and 2024 he served as President of Greenspace: The Cambria Land Trust.