He did a body of black and white in the early 70s – using only black acrylic on a white gesso ground – a compositional motive emerged as be reduced a complicated image to its essence. The painted areas became the negative space while the original white ground became bold jagged lines piercing the blackness award for one of these paintings. Boardman’s canvas remains flat because of its right – angled edges, but the color planes often seem to bend and twist in space. The slight roughness of the lines, softening the plane edges without lessening the impact of the image, saves the painting from mechanical precision. Strangely, disturbing canvases result from his explorations of mental expectation, and they are no less profound because they are quiet and beautiful.

Boardman’s spontaneous works on paper exhibits energetic vigor in attacking the surface with a concentration on strong and overlapping oil stick marks, maximizing his sense of palpable shallow space. In the 70’s and 80’s paintings were large with rectangular forms and working to the edge of the canvas. The 90’s were mostly oil stick colorful, playful, expressionistic works.

Seymour Boardman majored in art at City College of New York in 1938-1942. He served in the United States Air Force from 1942–1946, during which he was hospitalized for over a year due to a wound to his left shoulder, which resulted in partial paralysis of the arm and hand.

After a full medical discharge from the service in 1946, he left for Paris to continue his art education at the École des Beaux-Arts, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and Atelier Fernand Léger. Boardman’s work became more abstract but still based on figure and landscape. He returned to New York in 1949 and went to the Art Students League. Boardman continued to paint dark, moody paintings using a limited palette of black, white, grey, and an occasional additional color.

In 1955, he had his first one-man show in New York at the Martha Jackson Gallery. It was favorably reviewed by Hilton Kramer, Emily Genauer, Fairfield Porter, and others. “…inscrutable, dark, mostly in blacks stained here and there with calm whitish shapes, they yet manage to suggest something inhuman and romantic…” (N.Y.Times, March 26, 1955). He began to acquire recognition in the 1950s with his paintings of griddled facets seen as if through a frosted glass, without any crisp lines, and in bright colors favoring reds. Boardman’s friends included Lawrence Calcagno, Perez Celis, John Hultberg, Burt Hasen, Frank Lobdell, Richards Ruben, Robert Ryman and Nassos Daphnis.