On show throughout April, Whitewater Contemporary presents new work by painter Sam Brooks.
Sam’s still life and landscape works are influenced by 20th Century European Modernism and explore colour and form through a spontaneous approach to abstraction. Working in oils on panel or linen, she paints freely with sweeping brushstrokes, applying veils of modulated colour so that cool tones melt perfectly into warmer hues. As a student Sam spent time painting frescoes in Italy, and the pure pigments of fresco work now feature in her paintings, giving each a real radiance of colour and a soft, velvety depth. Many of these mineral pigments are sourced from the South Devon coastline where she lives and works, beside the Avon estuary and Devon’s beautiful Bantham beach, a place which inspires her vivid landscape paintings. She is a regular beachcomber, and the remnants of pattern and colour that she finds in sea-glass and ceramic fragments become what she calls “accidental motifs” in her paintings.
Sam Brooks was awarded a First-Class honours degree in Fine Art at Exeter College of Art. She continues to study under Robin Child, whose own professor was a pupil of Walter Sickert, who was himself taught by Whistler and Degas.
