Overview

Sam Lock paints viscerally. Using blowtorches and sanders as well as the brush, he sees each canvas as a battlefield. Sanded, stained, scorched and sealed, each work is the result of a continuous cycle of making - a repeated process of building up and destruction. The works have an elusive feeling, revealing layers of past images and tones that drop in and out of themselves. This sense of painterly archaeology brings attention to the movement of the mind and the residue of action, and the pervading sense of unpredictability. The physicality of Lock’s process is evident throughout his paintings. His expansive gestures and sweeping movements on a monumental scale as well as his smaller works, where marks made by the movement of the wrist are added to paper, translate into an energetic artistic presence visible throughout his works.  

 

‘Lock has talked of his aim to ‘submit himself to the canvas’, eliminating extraneous thought in order to guarantee a purity of response in which concentration and intuition, thought and action, go hand in hand’

Ian Massey

 

Lock’s preoccupation with ‘the presence of absence’ is evident throughout his works. Inspired by the works of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, the equivalence of the spoken word and protracted silence influence Lock’s practice. His painterly language of abstract marks and signs contribute to an exploration of the ways silence and interval might be iterated visually. The concept of time has been one of Lock’s primary themes in painting - time to create; history and memory and traces of other times and places. This ‘poetry of yesterday’ is sensed in all of his paintings. They are not paintings that reveal themselves at a glimpse. They require the viewer to find a new pace, to take the time to discern and contemplate the deeper resonances of the works. Acting as an interface between the conscious and the subconscious, the paintings’ surfaces create a connection between inner and outer worlds. According to Lock, ‘the best paintings nurture you from looking, into feeling,’ creating an experience that evolves from an artwork. 

Works
Exhibitions
Studio shots
Publications
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Biography

Lock’s interest in the relationship between history and archaeology, incorporated into and underpinning his painting practice, was developed during his time in Rome as a scholarship student. Sam Lock trained at Edinburgh University and College of Art, graduating with an MA in Fine Art Painting and an MA in History of Art in 1997. He has exhibited regularly with Cadogan since 2015 in both our London and Hampshire spaces and has shown at various galleries and fairs in Europe and Asia. 

 

 

EDUCATION 

1997

MA (Hons) Degree in Fine Arts and History of Art, University of Edinburgh 

 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 

2023

'Carta', Cadogan Gallery, Milan

2022

'Not the time of clocks', Cadogan Gallery, London

2021

‘The Fragment and the Infinite’, Cadogan Gallery, Scala Lambrate, Milan 

 

'Tempo', Cadogan Gallery, London and Hampshire 

2020

'Presence of Absence', Lemon Street Gallery, Cornwall, UK

2019

'In Situ', &Gallery, Edinburgh, UK

2018

'Unremembered', Twelve Twelve Gallery, The Hague, The Netherlands 

2013

'Trace Element' Solo Show, Studio 226 Chelsea Design Centre

 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS AND FAIRS 

2018

'Juxtaposition', Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne, Germany

2015

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London 

2008/09

Affordable Art Fair, London 

2003

O2, London

1997

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh 

 

 

 

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