Featured Artist - Sam Lock

Sam Lock's paintings are accumulations of materials and decisions; artefacts of thinking and doing, an attempt to locate poetry in the relationships, combinations and interactions between materials and physical elements.

Where do you get most of your inspiration from? My recent paintings feel like keystone pieces that have brought together several ideas that I have been exploring over the last few years; archaeology, ephemera, landscape.  They aim to communicate an aesthetic and psychological experience of time through surfaces that are layered, crumbled, faded, eroded; to evoke memories of the past.

Where and what is your studio?My studio is in the centre of Brighton, a rundown converted house by the Clocktower with 5 other artists.  I have been there since 2000; it is ideal for me, a bit dilapidated and full of a sense of history.
What music are you currently listening to?
In the studio I like to listen to music that echoes the tone of my paintings.  At the minute, I am obsessed with Bob Dylans album for Sam Peckinpahs film “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”; full of sounds and tones that resonate with the themes of the film, time passing, relationships breaking, worlds shifting.  Also listening to Nick Cave soundtracks for “The Proposition” and “The Assassination of Jesse James”.


Last book / film that blew your mind? I find it hard not to read “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and to watch anything other than “The Hustler”, “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”, “ Withnail and I” or “Das Boot”.  I like the feeling that the ideas and themes of these films/books becoming increasingly subtle and nuanced each time I watch them and the sense that I have changed in the meantime.

Do you have a good work/life balance? My life is a constant battle to balance the 3 things that are most important to me!  Spending time with my family (a nearly 4 year old and a new baby due before xmas), my job as a College manager running a Foundation course and millions of A Levels, and committing enough critical and creative energy into my own practice as a painter.  Sometimes one dominates the others but on the whole I have a good balance thanks to a supportive family.