When I arrive at Sam Brooks’ studio in south Devon on a perfectly beautiful morning, I am greeted by a bouncing cockapoo named Blue. ‘I love the colour blue,’ says Sam. ‘Blue paint, blue seas – so yes, even my dog is called Blue.’ Her studio, a huge converted barn in a courtyard sprinkled with pink magnolia blossom, overlooks the River Avon. A large blue sofa languishes against one wall. It is impressive by any standard. Most artists dream of such a space. Inside, a sloping, contemporary roof with high, studio-style windows sits atop ancient walls that still bear the marks of climbing ivy. It is a delightful mix of historic and modern, a double height space built to house Sam’s small and huge-scale works, which hang from floor to ceiling.
Sam is a still life and landscape painter whose works are influenced by the principals of 20th century European Modernism. She explores colour and form through a spontaneous approach to abstraction, resulting in a dazzling array of multiple works in progress. This place is a wonderland of contemporary painting and endless possibility.
Sam has a degree in fine art from Exeter College of Art and Design. As a student she painted frescoes in Italy, and the pure pigments of fresco work now feature in her paintings, giving each a real radiance of colour and a soft, velvety depth. Some of these mineral pigments are sourced from the Devon coastline, here beside the Avon estuary and from Bantham beach. She and Blue are regular beachcombers, and the remnants of pattern and colour that she finds in sea-glass and ceramic fragments later become what she calls ‘accidental motifs’ in her paintings.
Around the studio are pots and sticks of vivid pigment beside vases of flowers. At its centre is the largest palette I have ever seen, a three metre-long slab of glass drenched in a rainbow of wet oil paint. A bee hovers over it as Sam and I chat, caught in the delicious confusion of colour between the palette, the paintings and numerous vases of flowers. The bee and I are enjoying the exact same experience.
Stepping back outside, the very real beauty of the river, and of rural Devon, seems almost subdued in contrast to the way in which Sam sees it and expresses it on canvas. It makes me think of Van Gogh, another artist whose instinct for colour and beauty were far above everyone else’s. Sam, too, has that extraordinary eye for the wonderful.
