Sam Douglas

Another artist I discovered via instagram is Sam Douglas (not to be confused with another Sam Douglas that comes up in search results!).

I find his work really fascinating and interesting. It is romantic (in the classical sense), very tonal in quality and also so contemporary. He has travelled to many isolated places to find subjects for his art and in doing so, he is documenting topographical features like standing stones, that may not be around in years to come.

The following quote ascribed to him is from the website credited below:

‘Often using classical landscape motifs as a starting point, I aim to disrupt and transform them through painting processes that push the subject of the painting elsewhere; sanding down and scratching into the painting to create a sense of erosive forces and pouring layers of paint and varnish to build up the surface, evoking sedimentation and silting up of the land.

The burial and uncovering of elements within this surface can be suggestive of archaeological activity, with ambiguous forms half sunk in the strata of the paint- cryptic architecture, unnatural outcrops of rock and the remnants of industry.’