Hi Sam, tell us a bit about your story and how you came to be an artist.

I feel like I've been drawing my entire life - it's always something that has felt natural to me, though I grew up in a small town in Northern England, where there wasn't a lot of influence for visual arts - most people expressed their creative side through music (for which I have no talent at all!).

It wasn't until I moved to Melbourne around 8 years ago that I really started to explore painting. I feel that I owe a lot to the creative scene that exists in Melbourne - it's really helped me understand my style of expressing myself and allowed me to explore many different creative ideas.

How would you describe your creative process?

My process starts digitally, where I can iterate quickly, obsessing over colour balance and composition. I then bring the work onto canvas, allowing myself to embrace the changes that come from the iteration and change of mediums.

You have a very distinctive artistic style- is this more liberating or limiting when it comes to approaching a new work?

I feel like I could talk about this question for hours. 

I dont currently feel like my style is limiting - in fact I feel like it helps me break down bigger concepts. For example I had never included a snake in my work before, but in "Snakes in the grass" it felt natural for me to think of the bright red snakes and how I could outline them against the green grass, using a light outline to really pop them forward.

Having said that, if you would have shown me the work I'm doing now a year ago, I would have been really surprised, so who knows. I don't think too much about what's inspiring me, or why I choose to paint a certain way - I try to let it all come naturally.

“If you would have shown me the work I'm doing now a year ago, I would have been really surprised.”

I really like to contemplate the beauty in the ordinary and I feel art really has the ability to show you that. 

For example if you hang a mirror in your home in a position that brings a tree into the space, it suddenly makes the place feel so alive - this is the feeling that I try to recreate in my paintings.

Can you talk a bit about how your artistic style has developed over time?

I think over time I have focused more on the vision of a painting, the story it tells if you will, rather than how realistic it is.

When I first started drawing and painting in watercolours I was always trying to recreate photographs like for like. 

I think those are two of the main skills for artists; execution is really important, but the vision of the work is equally important