BIO
Sam Amberg is a self-taught queer artist living in Brooklyn. She primarily works with portraiture and the human figure, reexamining and challenging the relationship of classical female archetypes to contemporary feminine identity.
Light and shadow dance across bare female figures who lounge in ambiguous spaces, intrepidly gazing out at the viewer. Her large graphite drawings allude to carefully honed figure drawing skills, as muscular, gestural lines mingle alongside richly shaded skin textures. On canvases and sheaves of paper, Amberg translates her education in psychology, mythology, and art history into a visual exploration of what it means to be a woman creating artwork about women today.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Feminine power lies coiled and ready to strike at the center of my work.
Weaving together explorations of gender, identity, transgression, and myth, I respond to the objectification and demonization of women and our desires. The brazen women in my work are unrepentant and unruffled. They regard the viewer with a flagrant intensity. I portray women who have satisfied their own appetites, hinting at their so-called sins and monstrous aspects through symbolic details: a nibbled-down apple core, about to be tossed aside; dainty fingers, stained a disquieting red; reptilian scales trailing down a delicate neck. Lately, I have shifted to allegorical self-portraits, blending my identity with potent female archetypes like Eve and Chimera. Whether I collaborate with another woman or model for myself, the women in my pieces are tenderly and frankly rendered, using layer upon layer of paint and graphite to honor our irreducible complexity.
SAM AMBERG 