Samantha Clark
Birsay, Orkney
Artist, writer, creative coach. Based in Orkney, Scotland, where the Atlantic ocean meets the North Sea.
MessageI live and work in Orkney, where the North Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea, an island environment that shapes my life and my current work.
I'm an artist and author, originally trained in Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art and the Slade School of Art, and I also have a Master's degree in Philosophy and a PhD in Creative Writing. I have taught at Edinburgh College of Art, the University of the West of Scotland and the University of the Highlands and Islands, and exhibited throughout the UK and in Australia. I have carried out residencies at the British School at Rome, The University of Oxford, Grizedale, The Scottish Arts Council Australia Residency, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Stills Gallery, IAAB International Residency Programme in Switzerland, Wysing Arts Centre, and Timespan Arts and Heritage. I have been commissioned to make major public art works for The Balfour Hospital, Kirkwall, The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Great Ormond Street Hospital and Auchterarder Community School.
Awards include a the Royal Scottish Academy william Littlejohn Award, the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award, Scottish Arts Council Artist’s Award, an RSA Art for Achitecture Award and a British Council Scholarship.
Statement
Living in Orkney I have become fascinated by the way the islands' natural environment is being constantly shaped by the movements of water: sea, rain, snow, fog, mist, cloud, loch, river, wetland, ditch, puddle, and by the movements of sunlight over and through it. My work is a contemplation of this endless motion through a slow, repetitive drawing process, an attempt to capture water, drop by drop. There is something meditative about the contrast between the stillness and patience required by this drawing process and the ephemerality of the subject matter. It feels more important than ever, in these days, to pay attention to the everyday beauty of things like sunlight sparkling off wind-blown water, rain on the sea, mist rolling in over the loch. To notice and celebrate this beauty feels like a small but necessary act of resistance to all the darkness gathering around us.
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