About the artist
I paint until the colour holds still.
I'm Bobbi K. Samples, a painter working in Noblesville, Indiana. My subjects are close to hand — flowers from the garden, the birds that come through the yard, fields and waterways I've walked. I'm not trying to make a record of them. I'm trying to get at the way they registered.
Most of my paintings begin with colour rather than drawing. I put down a ground, then build the form out of what sits on top of it. Edges arrive late, if they arrive at all. A petal is a shape of light before it is a petal.
The Color in Silence series came out of wanting to stop dividing attention. Eight paintings, each surrendered to one colour, meant to be met in order and without commentary. They taught me how much a single hue will carry when nothing competes with it.
I work slowly. A canvas gets turned to the wall and left there, sometimes for weeks, before I know what it still needs. That waiting is part of the painting, not an interruption of it.
Studio practice
- Observation. Time spent with the subject before any paint is mixed — often days of simply looking.
- Ground. A first field of colour laid across the whole surface, setting the temperature of everything that follows.
- Building. Form accumulated in layers, worked wet into wet and scraped back where it thickens.
- Rest. The canvas turned away and left alone, so it can be seen fresh.
- Resolution. Final adjustments — usually fewer than expected — and then the work is done.
