John Sebastian

Bio
John Sebastian
Multi Media Artist

Working in the arts as a painter, writer, publisher, musician, and entrepreneur. I have lived my life in the arts and in the media world.
I publish an online Magazine called The New York Optimist. I own both www.thenewyorkoptimist.net which is the newer site and which is the older site.
I have been in business now for 9 years.

The New York Optimist is a weekly online magazine with a focus on the arts. We also feature Travel, Dining, Real Estate and Popular cultural subjects. I started my career as an actor and worked in many off Broadway theater productions. I played the lead role in 2 Tennessee Williams plays and acted in and directed many other wonderful productions. I then worked in film for a few years as a walk on in movies The Juror, The Devil's Own, and several other films. waiting for weeks in a holding area was not my idea of art.

I Studied playwriting and the method at HB studios in the West Village NYC, studying with Katharine Sergava, Uta Hagen, Bill Hickey and other well known stage and film actors. I went to college for 2 years and received an associates degree in business before I went to theater school to satisfy my father’s wishes. My dad was an artist and musician and worked as a chemist / metallurgist. He repeatedly told me throughout the course of my life to avoid becoming an artist although it was obvious from a very early age that the arts was what I was destined for.

I went to see a concert by RadioHead during my acting and corporate days and decided the next day to become a full time painter / artist and I would spend the next ten years working my day job as national marketing director for fox 5 TV and painting and showing in Galleries in NY and overseas. I have a commercial agent in film and television, which I have not been able to fully follow up with as
The New York Optimist has taken up all my working hours over the past 9 ½ years and the acting and film business is a full time process as is the business of painting. I started the NY Optimist due to a sensitivity to politics and bureaucracy, which is difficult to avoid when working for others in any industry. I never gave up on any of these careers rather I have been working privately and diligently on 3 new series of paintings, I have a film and book project which is complete and ready for representation and production, I am working on a full length fiction novel a seven act play and 2 film scripts. I am single but I try to find the time to date whenever I can ;-)