Sam J Gardner
Sam J. Gardner is an American multidisciplinary artist living and working between Europe and Latin America. His practice moves between painting, printmaking, publishing, and installation, often using found objects, texture, and everyday materials to explore the quiet poetry of peripheral landscapes. Rooted in walking, observation, and experimentation, his work transforms ordinary encounters into thoughtful and approachable compositions. Over the past decade, Gardner has built an international practice, presenting solo and group exhibitions across the United States, Mexico, Poland, and Ecuador. His work has been shown in artist-run spaces, galleries, and cultural institutions, including Eyedrum Art Gallery in Atlanta, the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca, Centro Cultural ZAMEK in Poznań, and Aparador Monterrey. Alongside his exhibition practice, Gardner has taken part in artist residencies in Mexico and Poland, experiences that continue to shape his way of working and responding to new environments. He is also the author of the bilingual artist book In the Dark (2018) and has received recognition for his printmaking through the Mini Print Internacional Ecuador and the Latin American Miniprint Contest in Oaxaca. Rather than searching for grand statements, Gardner embraces process, curiosity, and the unexpected. His work invites viewers to slow down and discover meaning in materials, places, and moments that might otherwise go unnoticed.
About the Work
I want my work to be approachable, I'm willing to risk it being perceived as having been created by a lazy slob. I have a penchant for cheap materials such as styrofoam, cardboard, and photocopies, but I also love traditional oil-on-canvas painting, which my recent work reflects.
Walking and observation inform my surroundings, but also daydreaming and escapism. A lot of different things go through my mind while I am working, but I'm not sure how much of it comes through in the final piece, because whenever I have some big Idea that I want to achieve, it usually gets erased or distorted beyond recognition during the creation process.
It's good to have a direction and a reason to keep going, but my experience is that holding on too tightly to an imagined result is often suffocating and counterproductive.
