Featured Artist for June 1998

Featured GiveAway by Samuel Bartlett Soft, 18" x 24" - 1996, Mixed Media on Paper Valued at $400

Joyce Davis Richmond, Indiana

Soft is a drawing that Sam categorizes as a "spontaneous creation". It started with the blue object in the middle and just created a life of its own from there. This is one of his favorite works and it truly emanates a softness that one feels when viewing this work.


MEET THE ARTIST

Samuel Bartlett was born November 7, 1974 in a United States military hospital in Okinawa, Japan. His desire to create art is more of an addiction than a conscious decision. When he goes for long periods of time without creating a painting, drawing, or sculpture, he tends to get 'thick' and irritable, which only goes away when he's being creative. He prefers to paint in the afternoon sun and sculpts and draws late at night. Although he sheepishly says he's had to stop working on sculpture at night now that he's married to his wife, Paula.

Featured Artist Samuel Bartlett

As far back as he can remember, he's always been doing something creative. In his childhood years, he drew comic book characters ad nauseam. First copying from the comics, then creating his own, with their own little back stories. As he grew up, he started building plastic models, particularly airplanes. He really enjoyed the painting aspect, especially when painting camouflage schemes. He believes this is where his interest in painting and sculpture began. For his fifteenth birthday, he was given a set of oil pastels and some paper. He didn't think much of it at the time, but in the spring of the following year, he started 'seeing' all these colorful and bizarre images in his head and had a strong desire to put them on paper. This is pretty much how "wanting to become a professional artist all started.

Unified Evil is one of his 'darker' works, and was created during a time of high stress and anxiety. He did not have a particular plan or idea for this drawing - it just came out this way. At first it was just 'Untitled', but after looking at it again a couple of months later, he realized it was an abstract representation of how he was feeling at that time, and the titled just popped into his head.

Unified Evil, 18 x 24" Mixed Media on Paper, 1995

ABOUT THE ARTIST

He doesn't get to paint or do other forms of art full time. Besides being an artist and living in Jacksonville, he's also a part-time student at the University of North Florida and works part time. His major at UNF is Computer and Information Science. Some would say that this is an odd choice for an artist but the main reason he chose this major is because computers are his second greatest interest next to art. In a way, he believes art and science are connected because they both strive to seek truth and explore the unknown. His time for painting, drawing, and sculpture, is pretty limited with his full schedule. He can usually get a few hours free here and there with some decent light and paints on his porch. Or, if he has a really good concept and feels the need to get it out, he'll drop everything to work on it. His time is sporadic and so is his creativity. He'd rather create five or six good works a year, than create twenty and end up hating most of them. He's become more selective about what's a good idea for a work and what isn't and he believes this comes from experience.

What truly makes him tick is his perspective on life. He thinks it's just a matter of odds that he has this ability compared to someone else who doesn't, but realizes that there are those who have talents and abilities in ways other than art. He believes his place in the universe is of no real consequence, but he makes up for this insignificance by creating art, an extension of himself to leave behind for all the world to see. He believes when it comes down to it, life is a mixture consisting of the decisions we make based on the choices we are presented, with a touch of randomness that occurs. He just doesn't think there's any real rhyme or reason to it and that "it just is".

The idea for Tangerine came to him after looking at paintings done by Cezanne. He liked some of his color schemes and wanted to try one or two of them, in a non-representational way. Tangerine is one of the successful attempts.
	Tangerine, 18 x 24" Mixed Media on Paper, 1996

He works in many different mediums, ranging from oil paint to sandstone and has yet to settle into any particular style. He simply lets his creativity take him where it wants to go. He believes that creativity, and the extension of art, are not products of logic and a conscious mind, but of chaos and irrationality. He looks back to the Expressionists, Cubists, and Surrealists for his inspiration. He's only had eight weeks of art education and left school because he believed they had no way to measure his art objectively. He felt everything else he needed to learn could only come from experience, and not from a book or stultifying academic art studio. His work has been displayed in about fifteen shows and has been used by a non-profits arts group in a video presentation in order to get funding (which they did receive).

	This work was done purely on a "subconscious" mode. The only actual planning he did was the layering and the layout of the color papers that were used. After doing a few pieces with just a white background only, he decided to try color. He thinks the result worked out well and it took a considerable amount of time and effort. This drawing took about fifty hours to complete.
Pen and Ink #1, 24 x 24" Mixed Media on Paper, 1997

He's moved about fifteen times, having lived up and down the eastern side of the continent. Due to this, even as a child he was self-contained, having to entertain himself and cope with the nearly constant changes. This was a major factor in sparking his creativity, using drawing and imaging stories as a distraction from the chaos. After high school graduation, he attended the Florida School of the Arts for half a semester. He felt that instruction was stifling and that the grading was based more on the instructor's opinion of the student rather than on the work itself. It was after this disaster that he started painting on his own, developing his own style, and learning a thing or two along the way. The artists who inspire him most are some of the modern masters - Picasso, Dali, Matisse, Van Gogh, especially after his visit to Europe and viewing the works of these greats in person, not to mention all the exquisite done sculptures by artists of the Renaissance.

Sam has always found masks interesting. He says, "Some use masks to represent deities, while others have used them to hide their true intentions. All of us, at one time or another have 'masked' our true feelings and/or intentions."
	Mask 2, 18 x 24" Mixed Media on Paper, 1995

There is one thing that Sam abhors - art teachers - with the exception of one instructor. He said all the other instructors were extremely negative about his work and his abilities as an artist. He indicated people who don't consider abstract art an art form is - self explanatory. He also mentioned the National Endowment of the Arts. Why ? Because while he believes it does fund many good programs, it also funds a small percentage of very controversial artists who grab media attention which then puts a bad spin on contemporary art.

Sam only uses oil paint and likes that oils take a long time to dry. Most of his paintings are well thought out, so any drastic changes are easy to accomplish. Most of his canvases are either old bedspreads or any kind of thick cotton fabric he can put his hands on. He doesn't use actual 'canvas' because it's just too expensive with going to school and only working part time. He says the same of paper. Any smooth-finish heavy paper will do. But he is very picky about oil pastels and color pencil and will only use Grumbacher or Sakura pastels and only use oil-based color pencils. He never uses chalk because he feels it's simply too dusty. Whatever he can afford for material, he uses for sculpture; although he prefers alabaster and soapstone.

	This is the fourth work in the Sunrise Machine series. Sam said this series came to him in a dream and seemed very similar to one of those black and white fifties film documentaries. The films about how the Sun works and shows various gears and pulleys used to make it work. He thinks his dream was very peculiar and sparked this concept.
Sunrise Machine IV, 18 x 24" Mixed Media on Paper, 1997

EXHIBITIONS


1997

August - Crafts and Gifts Exhibition

1995

March - OceanView Gallery March Show

1994

December - OceanView Gallery Silent Auction
November - OceanView Gallery
September - OceanView Gallery "Awakenings" Show
August - OceanView Gallery "No Apologies" Show (Solo Exhibition)
May - Jacksonville Beach Fine Arts Guild (JBFAG) Gallery; Jacksonville, FL
April - JBFAG Gallery Show
March - JBFAG Gallery Show
February - JBFAG Galley Show

1993

August - Fusion Cafe "Mass Murderers" Art Exhibition
July - Fusion Cafe Art Exhibition
June - Fusion Cafe Art Exhibition
May - Gallery 88

Contact the Artist

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ARTIST STATEMENT

I hope everyone enjoys viewing my work and comes away with something from the experience. A new perspective, an idea about how I think, or at least pleasant memories of the art. My hope is that within the next five to ten years, I will be able to become self-sustaining on doing what I love best - art ! ~ Samuel Bartlett