Remnants

Over the past few years Sam Douglas has travelled to various mountain ranges – the Himalayas, Caucasus, Atlas and Picos de Europa. These places have filtered into a recent series of paintings and serve as the starting point for the mapping out of an invented territory. The geographical and cultural isolation of such places offers space for escapist reverie, which once returned to the studio is explored through painting processes that attempt to refer to the geology and atmosphere of the mountain landscape. Erosion and sedimentation are present ifile:///Users/johnpower/Downloads/2013_11_15_Retreat_Promo-0233.tifn repeated sanding back, over painting and the pouring of successive layers of varnish and linseed oil to create an often-dense surface and atmosphere that both occludes and vivifies the image. The burial and uncovering of elements within this surface is also suggestive of archaeological activity, with ambiguous forms half sunk in the strata of the paint- cryptic architecture, unnatural outcrops of rock and the remnants of mining and quarrying occur throughout the work.
Sam Douglas, Wandering Flock, 2011, Oil on board, 60 x 40cm, Image courtesy of the artist.