Work
Sam works primarily with painted and cut collages. Also with pastel, pencil drawings and acrylic and oil. He is generally most interested in the place where accidental abstractions in colour and form become structured and recognisable and vice-versa.
Sam Chamberlain’s art has been featured in two group shows, both organised by the curator Flora Fairbairn, noted for her interest in discovering new talent. He had his first solo show at the Subway gallery in London in December 2009 and his most recent show is at the Lotus Foundation gallery, also in London. As well as generating considerable interest from collectors in the UK and abroad, his work has been featured in the recent book on contemporary collage Cut and Paste [Laurence King].
Sam Chamberlain is from New York City but has also lived in India and California and he currently resides in London. For more about Sam, see the biography section of this site
Some writing about Sam’s work:
“Sam Chamberlain describes mental as well as physical environments. His paintings and collages use material forms to encapsulate and frame the transcendent world that is the true subject of his vision, forming relationships between the places of the planet and the places of the mind.
These are images that ask the viewer not only to look again, but to think again: about what is and what isn’t, about what we choose to see and what we choose to ignore, about the nature of visual reality and the myriad unseen possibilities that exist alongside the consensual, agreed version of the everyday world.
Dominic Collier – critic – London 2009
“Chamberlain’s vibrant oeuvre is just my cup of tea: gutsy creations whose graphic good looks are expressionistic evocations of the natural world but with an appealing roughness.”
Mitch Owens – critic – for An Aesthete’s Lament 2010
“If any other artist would’ve created this work, it would have been Max Ernst—who else might even conceive of a Surrealist still life? But it is doubtful that he would ever have indulged in risks such as the ones taken by Sam Chamberlain.”
Hubert Decleer – academic – 2010
“I recently watched a repeat of ‘Shock of the New’, and was reminded that Matisse worked in collage too, cutting out chunks of colour with an ordinary pair of scissors to make such striking pieces, and Sam’s work is also striking, yet at the same time it is subtle; I like the way Sam suggests an image and allows the viewer to find it, very clever.”
Annette Hamley-Jenkins 2012
Other writing
Article about Sam Chamberlain that appeared on the Aesthete’s Lament Blog
Critical article, written about Sam Chamberlain’s Work: Muted Playfulness by Hubert Decleer
Cut and Paste By Richard Brereton and Caroline Roberts
Book about contemporary collage artists