Samuel McGann show at Chichester’s Oxmarket Contemporary

Samuel moved to the city to study fine art at the University of Chichester. He stayed in the area and works as an art instructor for adults with learning disabilities. He returned to the university where he once again took up painting and completed his masters degree.

Samuel describes himself as a mixed media artist working in acrylic paint, acrylic ink, oil paint, oil stick and charcoal on his work. He says he struggles with the idea of being a painter but rather an artist who draws with paint and other materials. He says he represents the human form in his work but toys with scale and proportions and never looks for a true or perfect figure: “People are not perfect so why depict them as perfect”.

He is concerned with capturing emotion or feeling. The work speaks strongly of his direct engagement with sociable and uninhibited environments, he explains.

In his most recent work Samuel uses photography. He then redraws the scene from a combination of memories and photographs working quickly to capture the moment. The photographs are often using a panoramic view or a fish-eye lens or are multiple images taken from a variety of different angles in the room.

Samuel moves around the area or through the crowd: “As a result straight lines seem to bend and perspectives become skewed.”

Working in such a way he is able to “encapsulate what it felt like to be in the drawn environment. The intentional use of bold fluid charcoal lines evoke movement in the works and persuade the viewer’s eyes to be drawn around the entire canvas.”

His influencing artists include Henri Matisse, Toulouse Lautrec and Pablo Picasso. Exhibitions include 2015 – XI years later, Gallery 9, Brighton; 2018 – Dual Exhibition, Electric Lady Gallery, Chichester; 2018 – Work exhibited at WOTAB Gallery, Littlehampton; 2019 – Work exhibited at Coffee Lab, Chichester; 2021 – Solo show H&S Coffee, Chichester; 2022 – SAM² Exhibition with Sam Bailey at Morisot Arts Crane Street Chichester.