Sam Loe's Art Practice:
At the heart of my art practice lies the somatic experience of inhabiting my body; a mapping and tracking of my inner landscape and physicality. This is a skill that I have developed over many years spent in self-inquiry through the practice and teaching of Yoga, meditation, breath awareness and conscious movement.
My drawing and painting practice continues to evolve through what I term ‘Somatic Abstraction’ – an embodied approach that allows conversations between inner and outer worlds. Drawing inspiration from art historical sources, particularly mother-child paintings, I investigate and respond to the gestures, textures, forms and shapes that describe a body or relationships between bodies. My main interest lies in the viscerality of these painting expressions rather than a recognisable, figurative narrative.
I begin with body imprints and shapes that I explore through diverse drawing techniques including scribbling, staining, patterning, shading, erasing, copying, sketching and cartooning. These initial marks dissect and reassemble bodily forms, creating a cartography of internal terrains. Layered with varied paint applications – from housepaint to oil – my work seeks a dynamic interplay between flatness and three-dimensionality. Collage comes into the work through decisive surgical cuts to the canvas followed by a re-assemblage, allowing new organic forms to emerge and recede through the layers of medium and process.
My recent series ‘Mothercake’, derives from the German word Mutterkuchen meaning placenta, the much overlooked organ that grows in-between mother and child. This biological metaphor serves as a conceptual framework for exploring liminal states, investigating body relationships and the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces. As writer Siri Hustvedt powerfully articulates, the placenta is “the dialogical organ, [which] symbolises humanity’s maternal origin, our radical dependence on others, and the terrifying borderlines between male and female, between human and animal, and between body and soul.”
Each painting becomes a metaphor for bodily change – evolving through subtle and bold shifts, obscuring previous layers while retaining traces of its origins. Just as a body transforms, so does the artwork, creating a continuous process of re-inhabitation and adaptation. This feels like a deeply physical process for me to explore the relationship between figure, ground and space.
