Saga 2

Saga 2 is up on the website! I'm in the thickets of Saga 3 right now, but I still love working large. Saga 2 is seven feet eight inches long. Here is a tiny picture of the huge painting. You can see it bigger on my website.

There are are some funny references in the piece. The black ship on the right is the U.S.S. Constitution, and the one on the S.S. United States, which is a sad wreck of an ex-cruise ship that is docked across from IKEA in Philadelphia. There are several recognizable political figures in the painting (many of them show up as a well-dressed species of invasive aquatic sponge) and the flowers from Saga 1 , which I came to think of as hysterical media beasts, have weaponized their speech. These paintings connect end to end, and they are meant to be read as one big narrative, from left to right.

I post pictures of my work in progress on Instagram a fair amount now (I'm the_drawist), and there's a nice picture of Saga 1 and 2 together there, as well as a few shots from a wonderful show I saw at the National Gallery recently: Outliers and American Vanguard Art, which was so, so good.

Politics (In the Weeds with Snakes and Saga 1)

I'm working on a series of paintings that are more explicitly political than what I've made before. In The Weeds With Snakes, from earlier this year, is very clearly about a personal reaction to the election. The content of this piece is impossible to see at a small size but you can click the link above to see details.

And this, below, is also an allegorical response to the current climate. It's also huge: it's an 8 foot watercolor and ink painting on paper. I love making giant watercolors, and I'm well into making the next one in this series. I'm going to make several of these large pieces. Each painting will continue the action the one before it, and the edges will match, so images flow from painting to painting. I've titled the first one of these paintings Saga 1, but I may well change that title as I get more of the series done. You can see more of Saga 1 on my website, here.

Samantha Simpson, Saga 1 (Working Title), Ink and watercolor on paper, 96" x 51", 2017

The large sequential pieces are based loosely on the saga of the Danian war that winds around Trajan's column in Rome.

I've been lucky enough to teach in Rome a couple times, and when I'm there I always visit the huge hole in the ground that surrounds Trajan's column. You can't easily get right up close to the images that wind around the column, but there is a long set of informational displays that show the images unwound in one long line. I'm always moved by those pictures. I know very little about the historical context of what I'm seeing, but it feels like a message from a lost society about the cost of a battle. It's a victory column with a message: we did this. Don't do it again. If you're interested, there's a great website that shows the images here. You can see details of my work on my website or on instagram, where I post in-progess shots of what I'm up to from time to time.

Philadelphia civic pride and frogs about the election

I'm particularly Philly proud this month because my work is in two group shows in two of my favorite civic buildings. 

You can see my work in A City of Artists, Celebrating the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours Philadelphia Art in City Hall gallery in room 116 on the first floor of City Hall. The exhibition was organized by the wonderful people at CFEVA and runs through December 2, 2016. The show celebrated the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours, which run annually in October, and which brought some lovely people to my studio last weekend.

A tiny book with images from my paintings will also be on view in another Philadelphia civic building in November: I'm in the Philadelphia Center for the Book's Little Lexicons exhibition at the Philadelphia Free Library's Central branch. The exhibition will be up from November 4th to January 13, 2017, and I couldn't be more thrilled. The Philadelphia Library is one of my favorite places in Philadelphia, and I am a regular. I especially love their Print and Picture collection and the exhibitions up in the Rare Books Collection. If you are from Philadelphia and you haven't been up there, you should go, stat. (Because Grip!)


And last but not at all least, my latest frog painting, What We Must Do, is in a show curated by the brilliant Susan Coote in Episcopal Academy's Crawford Gallery called Messages and American Dreams, which is up until November 16th, 2016. I'm delighted that Susan included this piece it: she's an amazing curator, and these frogs are all about the election, so it's wonderful to have them in this show.

Two new paintings: Visions and What we Must Do

I just put two new paintings on the website. The first one, Visions, is one that I started last fall before a brain injury and resultant vision problems stopped me working for a long time. There was a break in the middle of making this painting, but that worked out well. It's a complicated painting. The piece is about envisioning and vision, how we see ourselves and how we see painting.

The main text, which starts in the banner on the left, says, "If we presume it comes from what we need..." 

It continues across the top of the painting, "Maybe we should come to terms."

What I'm talking about here is my sense that there are vast areas of aesthetic pleasure and exploration that are left out of most art making. It's the same sensibility that motivates a lot of lowbrow work, but in my case I'm intent upon reconciling my sense of what is important in my daily life with what I value in painting. I'm trying to integrate my visual and psychological pleasures; my tendency to be an aesthetic omnivore and my desire to create a narrative complexity that honors lived experience.

These flowers are saying "It's us against the world" and "But, but...I like the world!" The first flower replies: "Oh Yeah."

(I hardly ever draw myself in paintings, except as a frog or bug.)

There are three big eyes in the painting. Each one is different. This one says, "The looked-at eye, imagined, adored. " The one on the left below is labeled, "The neutral, seeing eye, perceiving, confused." and the one on the right is the biological eye.

The turtle is making a proclamation. It says, "Perhaps there's more to be gained from a reconstruction of the natural than from the pseudo scientific narrative of modernity, which, let's face it, leaves everything out." The blue creature behind the turtle is a glyptodon, which is a wonderful prehistoric armadillo-like creature the size of a Volkswagen beetle.

I've made several small experimental drawings and paintings that I haven't put on the website, but I do post them, and pictures of work in progress, on instagram. You can follow me @ the_drawist. There are several new little paintings and drawings on instagram that began as test pieces: I've been trying out some new materials, thinking about making more pieces that lean more towards painting than drawing. 

The piece below, which is called, What We Must Do is almost entirely a painting. Only the eye of the large frog is drawn in ink. It's on a panel, and although I liked making it, I doubt I'll give up my pens any time soon.

(I mentioned above that I rarely do self portraits that are not frogs or bugs. In this piece I'm the frog on the bottom right.)

You can see details of my pieces on my website, and if you have any questions, ask away...