Sam Wadsworth

Sam’s drawings are excavations into objects he sees around him, objects that he feels have an offering of presence worth exploring further, to find in them lines and colours that are not initially obvious.

The subject matter is a starting point for his work and he will draw a thing over and over and quickly until he is drawing it half subconsciously and finding feelings and a structure to the thing that he couldn’t see at first. His drawings are not primarily about what the thing looks like, but what it feels like and what it can unlock in him in terms of colour and line. He hopes to be able to record this effectively in a drawing, painting or sculpture.

Making his drawings into three-dimensional sculptures has been a natural progression in his work as when he draws on paper he is also drawing three-dimensionally in his head. He feels like the pencil is moving back and forward through space, not up and down on a flat surface.

Sam’s sculptures help him realise this feeling as the drawings become what he has always felt they are, an actual physical thing, a linear exploration of the real world combined with his reaction to it and the new colours and lines that grow as he looks harder and draws it again and again. The sculptures are physical, tangible, and exist in space in their own right.

It took Sam twenty-three years to realise that he needed to make his drawings into sculptures, and he feels a great sense of peace now that the lines and colours that he sees in his head are real and can be seen and touched and cast shadows in real life.