Sam

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Degunst SAM is a self-taught, passionate and versatile painter who also loves to write, to play music and to sing. What makes her paint is a visceral need to express emotions as writing, music, singing can not allow her to let it all out.

Painting for her is a real outlet, a way to pass a message which is often personal, but not just so. Some facial expressions and body language make her feel the need to keep track of them. She re-lives the intense emotions by expressing them on the canvas, with the aim of sharing, as if she wrote a letter to someone.

Her choice for black and white allows her to reflect the fragility, the edge between the known and the unknown, the public and private, and the said and the unsaid. This subtle play between shadow and light suggests more than it reveals. She tries to show as little as possible, affording only the essentials and letting the imagination do the rest. To do this, SAM uses mainly a mixture of products based on her own ecological composition in black and white because it provides more contrast, the fluid painting offers more flexibility and precision this way. Being extremely attracted by details, she chose the smallest brushes for superior accuracy and total freedom.

On each new canvas, the evolution is evident: the details are becoming more present and imagination of the viewer is increasingly used to restore what the brush does not show, but suggested. People often need time before they notice that all traits are not present. What doesn't show correspond to the model's privacy and the one we are not supposed to have access.

SAM works most often from photos she has taken herself. The tool allows her to understand the structure of the base image to the smallest details, such as a medical imaging reveals the human body, allowing her to appropriate the original image so totally she can be freed from it more easily.

This is obviously a preliminary search. A time lag is sometimes important to step back from the cold and mechanical reality of the image. This distance helps to purify the multitude of integrated information for no more than the essence to remain on the canvas. Once the reflection is complete, the internal design is so obvious that the brush or spatula only have to translate it into colors and materials.

Les Artisans du Monde: fairtrade association (March 2008)

Vivabus: Calais exhibition gallery (April 2008)

Spycker: Exhibition in my birth place(the 10th and 11th of May 2008)

Abcone Hotel (10 Ashburn Gardens SW7 4DG London): Permanent exhibition in London (since the 12th of May 2008)

Alhambra:Mini gallery in the open resting room of the cinema (March April May 2009)

A la Ferme: One full window at my disposal for the whole month in one of the main streets in Calais (15th May - 15th of June 2009)

Médiathèque: Walls at my complete disposal (since the beginning of May 2009)

Blériot's exhibition room: (From the 16th to the 31st of October 2009)

Spycker's town hall: 14th and 15th of November

Permanent exhibition:

Abcone Hotel

10 Ashburn Gardens, London SW7 4DG, England

Tel: +44 (0)20 7460 3400, Fax: +44 (0)20 7460 3444

Email:

SAM Degunst was born into a family of travellers in 1967. Photography has come very natural to them, they used it the way one would take notes to share and compare later. Having first chosen black and white for technical reasons, they soon realized its aesthetic possibilities.

Once SAM has turned into a young adult, home-developing photography had become a problem because the products needed were then more difficult to find. Therefore she turned to writing small fairy tales with themes picked from her own life. Yet, she missed the visual means of communication a lot. Meeting the Quebec artist, Fauve Fauteux was the spark needed to come back on this ground. Though shy about painting at first, she had accepted Fauve's challenge quite quickly. She got instantly thrilled by this means of expression, as it offered a tremendous freedom unexplored so far.

She got used to walking around with a small watercolor book in her pocket, her brushes and colours in a pencil box never left her. The immediacy this technology implies made it the perfect transition from photography. She was so involved that she's booked a one-week course with Pascal Lefebvre watercolourist specialised in « light expressing ».

In 2006, Fauve Fauteux guessed there was a yet unexplored potential in SAM's art, therefore she encouraged her to take other painting classes in order to experiment further artistic exploration. Nadine Rubanbleu had been the perfect teacher for her. She's learnt new techniques with which to play a little more. SAM had specifically asked Nadine Rubanbleu to push her out of her zone of comfort in order to become even more challenging.

SAM had never dared to paint faces until early 2007, then a friend challenged her and she realized that once again, she wanted to leave what became a zone of comfort to embark on this new adventure. Her passion for detail and narrative could finally speak freely, since more and more admirers gave her the enthusiasm to continually challenge herself.