Matt Sesow in his Washington, DC studio — paint-spattered black shirt, earbuds in, his painting arm raised, the tip coated in pink and magenta paint, his bright paintings of the Washington Monument and a blossoming tree behind him
Washington, DC new.sesow.com →

FINGERLESS

No brush. No hand. Just the arm, the paint, and the canvas — every day, in Washington, DC.

The story

The story

Lost the hand. Kept the art.

01 · The accident

At eight years old, I was struck by a landing airplane in rural Nebraska and lost my left hand — my dominant one. There was no going back to the life before that afternoon, so I stopped trying and built a different one around the hand I had left. What looked like the end of something turned out to be the start of a way of working that’s mine alone.

02 · The work now

I’m self-taught, and I’ve painted nearly every day since 1994. The arm is the tool — it dabs, drags, and prints color straight onto the canvas, no brush in between. What comes out is loud, crowded, and alive: cities, faces, blossoms, a lot of pink. New work goes up every week and ships straight to the people who want it — 17,000 paintings and counting, in 40+ countries.

03 · What’s next

fingerless.org is the flag in the ground. The name was never an apology — it’s the byline. Ahead: more paintings, bigger walls, the brand-color series, and room for whoever wants to come along — collectors, galleries, the simply curious. The hand isn’t coming back. The work is just getting started.

Selected milestones

AVAM collection26 works in the American Visionary Art Museum’s permanent collection, after a year-long solo show.
UN stamp · 2013“Dive Bomb” selected for a United Nations postage stamp.
Retrospective · 2021168 works at Old Dominion University, hung alongside 13 original Basquiats.
Online since 1995Among the first artists anywhere to sell paintings online.
17,000+ worksSold direct to collectors in more than 40 countries.

See the full chronicle →

Every dab is an arm-print — never the same circle twice.

Where to go