Welcome aboard The Life Boat

The Life Boat sets sail every week to bring you writing about creativity and buoyancy from a windswept northerly island.

Hello, I’m Samantha Clark, Orkney islander, visual artist, writer, artist mentor and writing coach. Author of The Clearing

Why subscribe to The Life Boat?

Every Wednesday subscribers receive:

  • posts on creativity as a practice and a refuge we can always turn to

  • insights from my own creative practice to help you with yours

  • refreshing blasts of windswept island life from 59 degrees North (with pictures!)

  • inside-track views of what’s happening in my studio and artwork in progress

  • exhibition highlights and VIP access to online previews

  • book recommendations to inspire us

  • interviews and conversations about creativity and resilience

  • the opportunity to be part of a supportive creative community

    About The Life Boat

This began as a weekly newsletter about the art I make and why I make it, a means of sharing what I have learned over thirty years of devotion to a creative practice that has always been my own personal life boat. But as it’s evolved it’s also become a way to share the art and books, people and places that help me stay afloat in these increasingly turbulent times. I hope they help you too.

I write about where I live, because Orkney is a beautiful and interesting place and shapes everything I make, draw and write. And, no doubt because I live on an island, in a house beside a loch, with the sound of running water in my ears all day, I write about the beguilements and complexities of water, that most gorgeous, vital and life-sustaining of elements and the one most visibly disrupted by pollution and climate change.

That’s why I have chosen the name THE LIFE BOAT for my Substack. Because, as any islander knows, a boat is a lifeline, a means of connection, a way to navigate storms, a way to stay buoyant. A boat shows us that water is not how we are divided but how we are connected.

It’s my hope that on board this little Life Boat we can help each other stay afloat and learn to navigate the storms around us.

I’ll let some of my subscribers tell you why they love receiving my newsletter every week:

Your thoughtful writing about the practical value of art and making in times of great anxiety and upheaval.

Your book recommendations which are amazing.

Your beautiful photographs of Orkney which I find very grounding and uplifting, connecting me with a part of the world that is so special.

Your voice. It is like water. Sparkling, clear and vital. It awakens my mind to both familiar and totally unheard of perspectives.

You give of your work and yourself so generously. It’s a privilege to be in contact this way with what you are doing and where you are.

Your intelligence and use of language.  The way you think around a topic and query a whole area.

Your newsletter has invited me to create a space for reading it, rather than just read it. I am grateful for that.

So climb aboard with me!

About Me

I’m a visual artist and author living in Orkney and I use my experience to help other creatives make the work they feel called to bring to the world.

I’ve been a visual artist for thirty years with an MA from the Slade School of Art (UCL), and my art has been exhibited internationally, most recently at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. My first book, The Clearing was published by Little, Brown in 2020. I was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews in 2017, a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2018 and a Cove Park Scottish Emerging Writer Residency in 2019. I received a Society of Authors Award in 2020 and a commission from the National Library of Scotland in 2021. I have taught at some of the top UK Art Schools for over 20 years and now bring this experience to my coaching and mentoring.

In 2024 I’ll be focussing more time on my own studio practice, so I’m not taking on new mentees at the moment. I will be launching some new courses very soon, however, so do subscribe to The Life Boat so you hear when they are ready.

Here’s me speaking about “Flow” my 30m mural in the new Balfour Hospital just after it opened. Photo: Martin Laird

Here’s what some of my previous clients have said:

“Working with Sam over the last few months has been one of the best investments I have made in my art practice. I’ve enjoyed the slower pace of e-mail correspondence and it’s enabled a rich and detailed conversation between us.  The advice, prompts and resources in Sam’s emails are becoming a valuable record for me to refer to.

Sam is perceptive, knowledgeable, supportive and encouraging and I appreciate her gentle sense of humour and her care. I value the safe, non judgemental space that she creates for me to unravel and resolve issues about my art and over the months that we’ve been working together I’ve begun to develop a clearer understanding of my art practice and of myself as an artist.”

Andrea Butler, Visual Artist

“I contacted Sam for coaching because I had reached an impasse with a book I’ve been working on for a while. The feedback I received has surpassed anything I’d imagined coaching could offer. Her reading of the work showed a deep perceptiveness, as well as invaluable knowledge and understanding of the written word and its potential. Sam’s insightful comments and suggestions offered me the solutions and inspiration I needed to proceed, and much more. If you are looking for someone who can offer guidance and inspiration, you won’t find anyone better than Sam. I consider myself very fortunate to have found her.”

Angie Athanassiades, Writer

‘Ocean of Rain’, Samantha Clark, 2023, acrylic and gouache on paper

Subscribe to The Life Boat

Weekly letters from a windswept northerly island about creative life by the water, and the art and books that help us stay buoyant. Climb aboard.