232148077

Depuis Mardi 13 Mai 2008, tous mes portraits sont exposés dans la salle de petit déjeuner de l'hôtel Abcone, 10 Ashburn Gardens à Londres, métro Gloucester Road............ Since Tuesday, May the 13th, exhibition of all my portraits in the breakfast room of the Abcone Hotel, 10 Ashburn Gardens, Kensington (London), Gloucester Road Station.
Born in April 1967 in the North of France (Dunkerque), Sophie “Sam” Degunst has been living in Calais for the last 10 years.
Ever since she was a child, she was attracted to the beauty of things that seem common to other people. Born under Aries, she is a natural leader, a one-of-a-kind individual.
She challenges herself and her art constantly. She is both a painter and a writer, going from one medium to the other depending on what she needs to express, pencil and brushes being complementary.
The dynamics of her creative process comprise both the intense solitude which enables introspection and the emotion shared with friends of the same sensibility.
Sam works preferably from the photographs or videos she has made herself.
She uses the computer as a tool to understand every tiny detail of a picture structure, like an MRI reveals the structure of a body.
This is just preliminary research though.
After having questioned the picture and retrieved all the necessary information, she lets it all sink in for a while. This distance allows her to filter the flow of information and retain only the essence. And one day the image of what she wants to lay on the canvas begins to appear in her imagination. Brushes and knives instinctively translate that essence into colours and shapes.
Sam's artistic influences come from various sources, ranging from black and white photography (her father, SHEITAN-M...), to the early paintings of Kandinsky, the work of Fauve Fauteux and Andy Warhol, but with a different technical approach. She combines the atmosphere of photography with the freedom of painting, merging these two worlds into one universe.
Sam loves the contradictions in her models; she looks for the balance between the private shadows and the public spotlights.
The creations of Mika and his sister Da Wak have been a major influence in her painting career. The freedom she found in the characters and their universe were exactly what she was looking for at that moment in time. This is why she chose to share her art with you.