Sam Lock | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

Sam was born in London in a family environment conducive to art. A painter and former fashion illustrator, his mother encouraged him to embark on an artistic career. The young man studied art at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. During his training, he won a scholarship to stay in Rome, where he furthered his studies in the relationship between history, archaeology and painting. In 1997, he obtained a double degree in painting and art history. Back in England, he obtained his teaching certificate at the University of Brighton. He has taught art at Croydon College in London since 1999. He exhibits and regularly participates in various exhibitions of contemporary art across the UK. He currently lives and works in Brighton, in southeast England.\n Sam set up his studio in a ruined house in the city centre, a place perfect for his exploration of the ravages of time on the architectural space. Abandoning the learning from his academic training, he works in an urban style in keeping with his contemporary artistic influences: Antoni Tàpies (Spanish painter, twentieth century), Dieter Roth (Swiss German artist) and Gerhard Richter (German painter).\n The artist explores the relationship of the subject to the background by a crude approach to the medium. He designs his paintings as accumulations of materials. Each accident or unexpected event that happens when creating becomes part of the overall effect. Sam tends to animate the pictorial space in a suspended universe, between freedom and partition, density and engagement. Proceeding directly and spontaneously, he wishes to cause a reaction from the viewer. Scratched, scraped, burned, stained, and sanded... his works celebrate the aesthetics of imperfection.\n The artist draws his inspiration from nature, archaeology, geography, and physics. Abstract and pure, his compositions are a poetic metaphor for change and the transformation of society. They are silent witnesses of a changing world.