Saga 4

I just got Saga 4 posted on the website, and I couldn't be prouder. I'm noticing that each piece I make gets more tricky than the last one.

I want these Saga pieces to work together cumulatively, so I spend a lot of time at the beginning of each piece making sure that the left edge of the piece lines up with the right edge of the previous one. I think of them as big frames in a comic strip: they are meant to be read from left to right, and to form full compositions on the wall: so when I had three Saga pieces, like in the show at the Firehouse Art Center (see previous post), I cared that the composition worked as a triptych, and the right edge of the third piece balanced out the left edge of of the first one.

Samantha Simpson Saga 1-4, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 2017-2020)

 In Saga 4 I wanted a radically different sense of space: the close up water in Saga 3 had to become a distant cliff edge in Saga 4, but the pieces had to look like they were meant to go together at the seams.

I set this all up at the beginning of the piece when I make the drawings, but each piece takes a long time to paint. Saga 4 was no exception. I started Saga 4 in the summer of 2019 and I just finished it in March of 2020. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I worried about whether or not it would match up with Saga 3 every time I worked on it.

I never really know if they're going to sit well together until I finish. I move the pieces off my working wall and put them next to the previous piece. My studio is big enough to show two at a time, so I have to trust that they will work out until I see them together. What made this transition particularly tricky is that Saga 3 is a closeup: it's a take on Monet's water lillies. I want Saga 3 to read as a time of relative leisure before Saga 4's heightened concerns.

Below is a closeup of Saga 3  and Saga 4:

Samantha Simpson Saga 3 and 4, Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 2019-2020)

Saga 4 is below. It's an eight foot long piece, so there's a lot you might want to see in more detail. There's a wall being built, executive-graph bugs, a two headed goose and a human child with a plastic lightsaber. There's a nice big version on my website here.

Samantha Simpson, Saga 4, Ink and watercolor on paper, 91.5" x 51", 2020

I was getting ready to ship these out to the Rosewood Art Center in Kettering Ohio for a show this spring, but it's delayed until next year. I'm looking forward to it, but in the meantime I'm staying inside, staying safe, and I hope you are too..