We're not in Orcadia any more, Toto...
but a four star review has cheered me up!
Sorry there’s no voice recording this week - I have come down with a virus, my voice has dropped a couple of octaves and I have a disreputable wheezy cough which I think I’ll spare you!
Hello Friends
It’s been quite a week!
I travelled down to Edinburgh from Orkney last Wednesday with my dear friend and fellow exhibitor Anne Bevan, to finalise the installation of our work in the Royal Scottish Academy, via a quick trip to A&E (but that’s another story).
By Thursday, as we were working in the gallery, forecasts of Storm Eowyn were becoming increasingly alarming. Friends who were planning to attend the preview event long planned for Friday evening were texting ‘Should we come?’, ‘Is it still on?’, and then ‘Trains are cancelled!’, ‘All the buses are off!’
So I spent much of the day fielding flurries of messages to try and ensure everyone knew that the gallery was going to close all day Friday, and the preview was not going ahead.
But the show opened to the public as normal on Saturday morning, and we hastily rearranged an informal meet-us-there gathering for friends and family on Sunday afternoon. So the opening has been duly marked, if not quite as we had planned! It was pretty busy in the gallery at times, but of course I forgot to take photos - thank you to lovely friends with the presence of mind to record the occasion for posterity!
And of course, if you spend a whole year down at the end of a muddy farm track painting alone in your studio and then plunge straight into the melée of the big city hugging and kissing a whole bunch of people you are going to pick up a bug. Which I have.
So I am laying low for the next day or two, hoping to shake it off quickly.
Meantime, this review has cheered me up enormously.
I must admit to feeling just a wee bit teary reading this review by Giles Sutherland in The Times. It felt vindicating, that somone I have never met or spoken to should walk into the gallery and just ‘get’ it so fully.
I’ve been working as an artist for 35+ years. It’s a career best described as ‘solid’ rather than starry. I’ve never had a review in a national paper before. Come to think of it, I’ve not really had any review before!
It’s paywalled at the link above but here is the text:
★★★★
"For generations, Orkney’s ever-changing light, kinetic skies and the bare bones of its geology have inspired artists of all kinds, among them great poets such as Edwin Muir and George Mackay Brown.
Visual artists, too, are no exception and several of them have been assembled here, providing highly differing responses to these beautiful and mysterious northerly islands. Samantha Clark, based in Birsay, describes her work as “a meditation on water and time, and a response to the natural environment”.
Meditation is a good way to describe Clark’s approach because these studies in acrylic, often on aluminium or cradled board panels, oscillate between specificity and universality — and their meaning and substance also change, according to the viewer’s perspective.
From a distance, they often appear as abstracted studies of watery vistas, clouds or shining pools on shore or bog. Up close, they are an intricate merging of tone and texture, overlaid with complex, intricate webs that resemble microscopic or subatomic structures.
There is something deeply, spiritual and, yes, meditative about these intensely thoughtful responses to time and place. They feel as if they have been created from a perspective located within the land, rather than as an external observation of it.
These images are not only about place, but about that much misunderstood word, “soul”. The paintings have a devotional aspect and, in our secular times, that is a rarity and something greatly to be welcomed.
Bevan’s technique, although differing in medium, is about getting under the surface of things: literally. In a collaboration with an archaeologist, Mark Edmonds, she has explored the labradorite stones, brought back as ballast to the islands in the 19th century, as a figurative and literal device to explore the past.
Until 2 March.
Giles Sutherland, the Times, January 27th 2025
A four star review in The Times! It’s a big deal.
But also, not.
I’ve been in this game long enough to know that such things are nice, but they don’t necessarily change much. In a week or two I’ll be back in my studio, trying to pick up where I left off.
It’s certainly a morale boost, I won’t lie. But when the dust settles it will just be me and the work again.
That’s the heart of it. That’s what you need to value most. That’s what you need to build your life around, not the reviews and reception, be they good or bad or indifferent, but the practice itself, so you feel like you can’t make it through the week without doing that thing you do whether anyone else ‘gets’ it or not, whatever it is: writing poetry, making music, drawing, making pots, baking bread, doing yoga practice.
Life Raft Zoom Co-Working
I’ve been unsure if I should go ahead with this week’s Wednesday Co-Working as usual. At the time of writing this, my energy levels are through the floor. I might feel better tomorrow. I don’t know. So, my apologies, but I am going to have to cancel our Life Raft Co-Working session and take a day or two off to regain my own buoyancy.
I hope normal service will resume next Wednesday.
The Real Life Life Raft Meet-Up in the galleries on Thursday Feb 6th will go ahead as planned, and I’d love to see you there if you can make it to the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Meet at 12 noon. Follow the signs for In Orcadia or ask staff.
Do let me know if you plan to come and especially if you’d like to stay for some lunch in the (very nice) cafe downstairs. I need to know numbers to book a table, and I’ll forfeit the deposit for any ‘no-shows’. So do drop me a message or email if you’re definitely coming for lunch.
Well that’s all for this week. I hope to back up to full speed soon, but for now I’m off to lie on the sofa under a duvet and sip Lemsip.
You can view all the work in the exhibtion online here:
Bye for now!
Sam
I'm so happy for you! This is a wonderful and moving review of your work, and it's so well written that I know you appreciate it on the deepest level.
Your work is stunning and deserves a review like this. I loved the online exhibition too.