Artist Roster

Shay Seaborne, CPTSD is a disabled multidisciplinary visual artist whose expansive practice encompasses approximately 500 watercolor, ink, and psychiatric-hospital-pencil works. Rooted in Relational Neuroscience, critical medicine, and lived experience, Seaborne’s art acts as both personal testimony and institutional critique. Their practice was born from profound necessity during years of significant functional and visual disability after repeated psychiatric and medical abuse. Painting became one of the few forms of work they could pursue independently. Seaborne’s work is deeply material, often created using limited, accessible tools such as a “kindergarten” watercolor set, and stubby pencils from their psychiatric hospital encounter. 

Their work spans multiple distinct modes, ranging from gentle, accessible educational watercolors—such as those featuring Della the IPNB Ladybug™—to sharply satirical outsider cartoons that challenge the depersonalization of the "mental illness industry." By utilizing cartooning, grotesque imagery, and visual metaphor, Seaborne exposes the gap between human lived experience and clinical labels. Whether exploring the co-regulation of Interpersonal Neurobiology or the piercing rage of their outsider critiques, their work fundamentally examines human suffering within social and relational contexts rather than pathologizing it. As their circumstances change, Seaborne continues to expand their practice into ceramics and mixed-media, maintaining a lifelong commitment to creating that honors the history of their own survival.