Traywick 25th Anniversary: Limited Edition Print to benefit Reproductive Rights

Samantha Fields: Scope, a limited edition print

For the 5th release from the gallery’s 25th Anniversary fundraising project, we are pleased to offer Scope, by Samantha Fields: a limited edition print featuring an image specially selected from the artist’s rarely seen photography archive. Depicting a glowing palm tree haloed by rings of sunlight, and reflected through the echoing lens of a scope, this work reveals the transformative properties of light as seen through ephemeral occurrences. As in her larger practice, Fields immerses the viewer in landscapes that embrace both fact and fiction, recreating the energy and emotions of fleeting moments. Continuing our support of reproductive freedoms and equitable access to health care, 50% of sale proceeds from the release of this print series will be donated to reproductive rights organizations like Sister Song and Planned Parenthood. Released June 2022.25th Anniversary. Art for Change.

Throughout the year we will be releasing multiples and editioned work, created by gallery artists to mark the occasion. Sale proceeds from these releases will be donated to groups like Planned Parenthood and Sister Song, that advocate for reproductive justice and freedom, ensuring access to the care and resources all people need to make informed decisions about their bodies, their lives and their futures.

Where We Are Now at Traywick Contemporary

Recent work by Samantha Fields, Benicia Gantner and Coleen Sterritt June 11 - August 6, 2022

Traywick Contemporary is pleased to announce We Are Now, an exhibition of recent work by three California based artists: Samantha Fields (Los Angeles), Benicia Gantner (Marin County) and Coleen Sterritt (Los Angeles).

Reminiscing about time spent and time lost, this exhibition explores our changing world as we look back over the recent past, and think ahead to what the future might hold. Each artist relies on real-world materials and imagery to create work that reflects shared experiences through observational study of daily life. Suggesting moments of transition, their work encourages viewers to look more closely at the fragile world around us, and to experience firsthand the possibility of transformation.

An artist that typically relies on travel for her creative process, Samantha Fields looks for the changing light and shifting atmosphere of specific locations in her attempts to capture the ineffable in her paintings. Confined to home during the pandemic, Fields began looking to the outer world from her windows, to escape her confines through the pinpoint-focused view of scopes, which in turn introduced new vistas swimming in color and light. The experiential nature of Fields’ paintings immerses the viewer in fleeting moments: smoke lingering in the sky from nearby fires, the blur of city lights reflected on wet pavement, the blazing sun in unprecedented heat waves, or transient shadows shifting across a nighttime landscape. The transitory flashes she depicts in her paintings – gone nearly as soon as they begin – speak to the ephemeral qualities of both time and beauty.

Facing Fire at UCR Arts Block: Interview

Interview with Douglas McCulloh

Samantha Fields is a disaster artist. “Disaster, from massive storms and wildfires to political collapse and personal tragedy, fascinates and troubles me.” Fields’ paintings are an inventive update of traditional allegorical landscape painting: ominous vistas and environmental calamities portrayed with a deadpan, analytical accuracy that underlines the fragility of life and the certitude of death and disaster. The wildfire paintings are based on her own photographs. Of late, she says, she can pick and choose among Southern California conflagrations. Some have been close by her own southwest-facing hillside house in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Fields presents the viewer with images of mysterious manufacture. “I paint atmosphere with atmosphere,” she says. There is no touch of hand, no texture of paint. She sprays coat after coat of vaporized acrylic paint onto super smooth canvas. “It takes hundreds of layers to create the paintings, which while photographic, deny the accuracy of that medium upon closer inspection.” In the end, the paintings feel as shadowy as the drifting blurs of vapor, smoke, and haze they reference. Their gossamer, ethereal quality invokes the sublime. But the tenuous insubstantiality undermines certainty, questioning the veracity of photography, of memory, of perception itself.

Another Year in LA: 6' Apart, in it Together: Samantha Fields & Cole Case →

For our Summer exhibition, “6’ Apart – In It Together”, we are featuring two Los Angeles-based artists who have been making work this year that address both sides of the pandemic isolation orders.

Cole Case, paints images that are devoid of humans except for residual evidence of their actions. Bagged groceries that have been delivered are seen through a glass door or products placed out on a table outside to quarantine before they can be brought in the house. The way that Case presents these commonplace images become haunting reminders of the world in which we live. There is a deep sense of pathos and loneliness in his paintings on paper.

Samantha Fields’ aerial view paintings, on the other hand, of multitudes of people seen congregating on ocean beaches have an immediate sense of doom because of the possibly of their spreading the Covid-19 due to their lack of social distancing. What would have been playful images, a few months ago, of throngs frolicking on the beaches are now horrific because we are knowledgeable that this invisible virus can be anywhere. The aerial imagery gives us a forced distance from those on the beach which imposes a lack of individuality; so those depicted are just flecks of paint and not men, women and children.

Artists respond to their times and the social/physical environments of those times. Cole Case and Samantha Fields paintings are remarkable documents of our 2020 Pandemic Stay-At-Home era.


Read More

Riot Material: Another Week in the Death of America by Eve Wood →

The first verse of the Mamas and the Papas seminal 1960’s anthem California Dreamin’ begins with “all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey,” at once establishing an atmosphere devoid of color, hope and youthful abandon, and certainly not a description one would associate with the sunny, carefree lifestyle that has become emblematic of the quintessential California experience. Ultimately the song is a lament, a yearning to return to a brighter, more hopeful landscape, if only in the songwriter’s mind. Samantha Fields solo exhibition, American Dreaming, could be said to expand on this longing, albeit taking a darker more ominous approach.

Read More

Art & Cake: American Dreaming or American Nightmare by Lorraine Heizman →

The suite of ominous paintings by Samantha Fields at LSH CoLab tell a story about America in decline, where promises are destroyed and scattered like confetti in a ticker tape parade. Depicting natural disasters and explosive accidents, Fields deftly turns tragedies into dramatic allegories, creating a dark portrait of our country’s damaged psyche that might be even timelier now than when the artist began this body of work in 2018.

Read More

LA Weekly Art Pick: by Shana Nys Dambrot →

Los Angeles painter Samantha Fields gained recognition for her lovingly rendered images of disasters and disorientations in the natural landscape and built environment — fires, floods, tornadoes, and the like. But since 2016, her concept of destruction has expanded to include the chaos and confusion rampant in this chapter of our social and political history. While her iconography and palette intensified, the images have remained metaphorical, with emotions evoked and Cassandra-like warnings issued, and dark humor abounding as a strategy for staying sane.

Read More

Art & Cake Review of Girl Crush →

The show features a variety of styles and techniques, but the art is united by a common sense of mood, place, and color.  Stephanie Kelly Clark’s amazing embroidered needlework looks at first glance like pastels. Lisa Golightly’s deceptively simple beach scenes have the soft gauze of a hazy memory.  Samantha Fields tiny paintings capture the grim beauty of forest fires.  Stephanie Vova’s photographs invoke the washed-out colors of an old seventy’s movie starring Gene Hackman or Nick Nolte.

Read More

Art For Your Ear: Interview with The Jealous Curator, Danielle Krysa

Here's a brand new interview with The Jealous Curator Danielle Krysa, where we talk about childhood, how I moved to LA, being married to another artist, teaching, and of course, the paintings. You can also find out if I prefer to swim with shark or hold snakes. ;) 

You can listen here:  http://www.thejealouscurator.com/blog/2017/03/10/if-im-in-the-zone-leave-me-alone/

Or you can download Danielles podcast on itunes at Art For Your Ear, I recommend it, there are over 90 inspiring talks to listen to, and Danielle always asks great questions.