Exhibited · 18 paintings
Shown at Art for Meat Tax
Creative Factory Veldze · Matīsa iela 8, Riga · Sept 4–6, 2026 The paintings I brought to Riga for the festival’s 2nd edition (Māksla par gaļas nodokli), whose themes are empathy, environment and health — with gluttony as this year’s special theme.
Created in Riga · 15 paintings
Painted in Riga
Riga, Latvia · Sept 1–10, 2026 New work I posted as I finished it, straight from Riga — city sketches, festival-inspired pieces, and other inspiration the trip pulled out of me.
On the air in Latvia
Radio, TV & the closing panel
Radio NABA 95.8 FM
Friday 4 September 2026, morning show, 21 minutes. White captions = spoken in English; yellow = translated from Latvian. Our photographs of the studio, then the paintings each one is talking about. Read the transcript →
The hosts, Mārtiņš and Irbe, open in Latvian; Katrīna introduces the festival; then we talk in English about painting four blocks from the White House, bomb-sniffing dogs at the post office, grey peas and sprats, and the Bremen Town Musicians.
Then a moment that turned into a painting. The hosts explain their names: on Mārtiņdiena, Mārtiņš's name day, Latvian tradition offers a black rooster; Irbe means partridge. Matt says he'll paint them. He did — that afternoon. See Partridge and black rooster →
Asked about the work in the show, I explained what I'd painted for the festival:
“I made a specific body of work for this show, focusing on — not specifically the meat tax, because that's not a subject for me to weigh in on as an American coming to Latvia. But I had plenty of background painting animals, and how we see them, and how we treat animals differently depending on which animal it is… Say, putting a girl hugging a dog next to a girl hugging a pig and asking: what's the difference here? Why do we love one and eat the other?”— Dana Ellyn, Radio NABA, 4 September 2026
The building
Radio NABA is the University of Latvia's non-commercial station. It broadcasts from Aspazijas bulvāris 5, a building put up in 1902–04 as the city's imperial Post and Telegraph Office; Riga Radio moved into it in 1932. The boulevard is named for the poet Aspazija (1865–1943), wife of Latvia's national poet Rainis — whose granite statue we passed in Esplanāde three days later.
Latvian Television
LTV Kultūras ziņas (Culture News) came to the apartment on Wednesday 2 September and filmed us doing what we came to do — painting. Reporter: Alise Zalite. Three minutes, with English subtitles.
Dana talks about the series she made for the festival; Matt about the accident at eight that shaped his work. English transcript →
The closing panel
“Activism Art — Changing the World One Painting at a Time.” Sunday 6 September, 17:00, in the Veldze courtyard: Dana Ellyn, Matt Sesow and the Latvian artist Katrīna Tračuma, moderated by the animal-rights activist Sandris Ādminis. Fifty-one minutes, in English.
“With my art, I learned to be kinder and gentler, and approach it in a way that everyone could … instead of it hitting you immediately.”— Dana Ellyn
“I started painting … as a full-time programmer at IBM in Washington, DC. I had no idea I wanted to paint or could paint. It just kind of came to me when I was 28 years old.”— Matt Sesow
“We paint the times we live in.”— Matt Sesow