Samantha Thompson

Samantha says, "I didn’t choose art as a profession, life chose it for me.” Thompson is a prolific visual artist working from her studio on a property in regional Victoria which she shares with a partner obsessed with old English cars, numerous chooks, and her three young boys. To know Samantha and the life she has experienced in her 37 years is to understand her work and its meaning to her and to those who fall in love with it.

As the youngest in a close family of four girls and a boy, she was born in Sydney to immigrant parents from California but grew up in Melbourne and spent her formative adolescence years in the lush Dandenong Ranges which greatly influenced her and her passion for art. Her creative influences come from her mother’s talented patchwork quilt making which gave her a love for colour and the colour-matching skills that are a strong part of her work. While working in her father’s Bridal shop reinforced her strong sense of the feminine and gave her strong female role models. “My art is contemporary in style and features a strong feminine theme that says that women can be smart and beautiful at the same time expressed in vibrant colours and big splashes of playfulness” The fragility of life and the pain and permanence of death has been impressed upon her consciousness from an early age.

Tragic personal experiences have made her wistfully reflective of the past, extremely optimistic for the future and very present in the now. “Life is to be feasted upon… taking big bites and savouring each one to the max” This is why her art exudes a passion for life, love, sensuality and movement all expressed through bold colours and an unashamedly sensual “joie de vivre” From a life in the fast lane of the fashion industry in New York, London, New Zealand and Melbourne she opted out, moved to the country and a slower pace that does allow her to stop and smell the roses, hug her three boys every day, bake awesome cupcakes for them and take risks that fill her life with the things she wants to do instead of those others think she should do.

Besides riding motor bikes, driving a sports car, training in Judo and Maui Thai while finishing a degree in Myotherapy, creating art is what most satisfies her and best fills her time and makes her heart sing. In fact, Samantha sings and talks while she works! Sound is an integral part of her creative process and she finds that her creativity is inspired by the radio, a poem that moves her or a phrase she has overheard which gives rise to images which she explores through a tactile relationship between her and the pieces she gives form to. Many of her compositions display a playful exploration of the anatomical female form and the dynamic relationship of bodies that are always in subtle motion to conjure highly evocative and erotic expressions of femininity. Her art is highly sought and valued by private and institutional collectors. Samantha is currently preparing for her next major exhibition