Artist Statement
In contrast to water’s quick mutability and aligned to its drip-by-drip persistence, my drawing process is a slow and meditative practice, a patient accretion of simple marks and translucent, layered washes that results in intricate forms resembling sea foam, cloud formations or wave patterns. Complex patterns emerge from an iterative process akin to the self-generating growth of natural structures.
The paint I use is often as liquid as my subject: it drips, splashes, flows, evaporates and spills in unpredictable ways. I often use reflective and iridescent media such as mica, metal leaf and chrome ink to create surfaces that change, as water does, with each shift of light, in a visual play between surface and depth that responds to the viewer’s movements.
Mark-making takes the brief moment of the hand’s movement and holds it still, recorded in the mark that remains. Growing breath by breath, the slow, repetitive drawing method I employ makes each painting a receptacle of time, a net that gathers up these moments so they are visible in a single instant that shows the timespan of the artwork’s own making.
My work invites a recalibration towards slowness, stillness and attentiveness, proposing these as a means to connect us more deeply to our own awareness and our place, and to sensitise us to the water-borne web of kinship and interdependency that supports us. As any islander knows, water is not just how we are separated, but also how we are connected.
This then, is the paradoxical aspiration of a practice that is quiet, repetitive, often solitary, that bears the hallmarks of an introvert nature, and that responds to an island location many would consider ‘remote’: to connect.
Samantha Clark is a visual artist, writer based in the Orkney Islands and working internationally.
Shaped by Orkney’s dynamic natural environment of wind, sky and water, her recent work invites us to notice how we inhabit a liquid reality that interpenetrates our own bodies and minds.
Originally trained as a tapestry weaver, Sam’s practice has evolved over thirty years through writing, drawing, installation, video and permanent works in the public realm, with painting as her primary current focus.
Bio
Sam trained at Edinburgh College of Art (1985-89), Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts (1991) and the Slade School of Art (1993-6). She has an MA in Environmental Philosophy (UCLAN, 2011) and a PhD in Creative Writing (St Andrew’s University, 2017). She has carried out numerous residencies, commissions and exhibitions, including a commission to create a 30m mural for the entrance hub of the new Balfour Hospital in Kirkwall in 2019, residencies at Oxford University, the British School at Rome (1991), the University of Tasmania (2000) and IAAB International Exchange Studios in Basel (2004).
Her first book ‘The Clearing’ was published by Little, Brown in 2020. In 2023 she received the inaugural Royal Scottish Academy MacRobert Trust Art Award for Painting.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 Confluence Northlight Gallery, Stromness
Undulations Birch Tree Gallery, Edinburgh
2020 The ClearingPier Arts Centre, Stromness
2010 Coalesce: Drawing from the Natural History CollectionsEdinburgh University
2007 The Subtle EtherCAST Gallery, Hobart, touring to Devonport Regional Gallery, Australia
Oriel Mostyn GalleryLlandudno, Wales,video installation, two person show with Nick Cobb
2005 The Subtle Ether Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, UK
Still Lifewith Rory Macbeth, Kaskadenkondensator, Basel, Switzerland
2004 Reach Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Powys, Wales
The Sea Inside IAAB Atelier, Basel, Switzerland
2003 Enchanté Villa Olga, Montpellier, France
2001 Staring Out to Sea West Space, Melbourne, Australia
Trying to Come Home Linden Gallery, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia
2000 Remote Sensing Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 In Orcadia, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
2023 Orcadia, Brown’s Gallery, Inverness
2023 Drawing In, An Tobar, Tobermory, Isle of Mull
2022 Research + Practice, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
2021 Cutlog | Essential Travel, Society of Scottish Artists, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
2020 Changing Tides | Tides Changing, Society of Scottish Artists, online exhibition
2013-15 Felt PresenceDevonport Regional Gallery, Tasmania. Touring Australia nationally
2015 5%...As Far As the Eye Can See,Allenheads Contemporary Art, Northumberland, UK
2012 Poetry Loops, short video screenings, StAnza Poetry Festival, St Andrews, Scotland
2011 Wonders of the Invisible World,Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland
Environmental Dialogues, Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh
2010 Gentle Actions: Art Ecology Action, Kunstnerneshus Olso, Norway
AWARDS AND COMMISSIONS
2023 Royal Scottish Academy MacRobert Trust Award for Painting
2021 Royal Scottish Academy William Littlejohn Award for excellence and innovation in water-based media
2021 Fresh Ink: National Library of Scotland, commissioned writer
2020 Society of Authors Grant
2019 Balfour Hospital, Kirkwall,artwork for internal glazing and wall in hub of new build hospital
2014 Scottish Education Trust Award, to attend Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference
2009 Scottish Arts Council,Creative and Professional Development Award
2008 Perth Visual Arts Forum,Dunkeld, Perthshire, commissioned artist
2005 Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, ‘Sky Flowers’ video installation
2001-5 New Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, permanent sculptural installation in new building
2000-4 Auchterarder Community School, architectural collaboration for secondary school, received
special mention in Saltire Society Arts and Crafts in Architecture Awards, A Civic Trust mention,
used as a Movement for Innovation demo project, included in OECD World Exemplary Schools Compendium, featured in Scottish Executive’s ‘School Design-Building Our Future’ programme and shortlisted for GIA Award and Dynamic Place Award.
2004 SAC Artists Award, Hope Scott Trust Award
2003 Stills Gallery Research and Training Award
2002 SAC National Lottery Capital Grant Award for architectural project with Anderson Bell
Christie and PACE, designs for Auchterarder Community School, Perthshire
2001 RSA Art for Architecture Award, with Anderson Bell Christie architects