Having not really drawn since studying for her Art GCSE, Sam Simpson studied the Art Foundation Course at Blackpool and the Fylde College in 2008. From there, she studied for her BA (Hons) Fine Art and Professional Practice at the same college. She has developed her practice and now teaches Art in St Anne’s.
Sam tells me the ideas for her current work came from twenty years of dancing. The connection between her and the people around her, while she was out dancing, were a huge influence. Originally, Sam was an indie kid, a lover of bands like The Stone Roses and Primal Scream. She wanted to convey her passion for dancing through her work and drawings.
Previously, Sam worked with words. From there she moved into working in chalk pastel, a medium which lends itself well to expressing movement, “Because the pastel is free and expressive, whereas oil paint has a definite mark, and pastel is easier to manipulate, and express.”
For Sam, when she goes dancing, the connection between herself and the people she meets, and those she knows best, is portrayed within her work: figure drawings of urban scenes and dance. She says: “To see someone ‘lost in music’, sends shivers up and down my spine and puts a massive grin on my face.
When I met her, Sam was wearing a red T-shirt with her own words printed in black newspaper print, each letter painstakingly cut out and arranged and hand-printed for her upcoming exhibition. The inscription read: What would life be without LOVE, LUST, FRIENDSHIP, the anticipation of a night of dancing to DJs that overwhelm you. And you forget everything apart from the sound and the bounce and the people around you.
Sam is exhibiting her expressive drawings at the Galleon Coffee Bar on Topping Street from April 3 to 30. The theme for the exhibition is ‘Lost in Music’.
“Dancing,” says Sam, “leaves me in a great mood.” She believes everyone should dance. Her work which will make up the exhibition is dominated by line drawings and chalk pastel drawings. They are delicately executed on black card, or painted on a black background. There is fluidity to Sam’s drawings yet all are sharp in the quality of their lines.
Sam captures the anatomy of a dancer in motion, so there is an ethereal sense of space captured; a definite difference between dancer and background. Her images are surreal and transient, conveying a dreamlike state, or trance, which is achieved when dancers are ‘in the zone’; lost in total concentration. Sam likes to get lost in music; it’s a type of ritual. Please go along with to the exhibition in April and lose yourself in her images.
Images by Jill Reidy of Two Old Birds Photography.
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