Sasha Samuels
Her paintbrush scrubs the hundred year old surface of the hand woven canvas. She steps back from the altar where her painting rests beside a glass of dusky red wine, crafted just beyond the hill outside. Sunlight streams through the rosette window above, illuminating her workspace. The Tuscan studio of artist Sasha Samuels is a 14th century Romanesque church, its back nestled into an oak forest teaming with wildlife, its Southern façade a sentinel overseeing the vast cultivated valley below. “Realizing this studio has been my dream for over twenty years.” She savors her time here as it nourishes her both physically and spiritually.
Born and raised in New York into an artistic family and surrounded by European immigrants, Samuels developed her creative passions as a child. By age twelve she was selling her small sculptures in a local shop. By age eighteen Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were commissioning her for portraits of their family’s horses. After graduating high school with honors and a fistful of awards in arts and language, she attended the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Here she intensified her studies in jewelry and metal arts, taking her senior year abroad as a member of her school’s European Honors Program in Rome, Italy. This decision to spend a year in the Eternal City proved to be a landmark for the young artist.
Anyone with a lust for life who has been to Italy has been overwhelmed by its art, history, beauty and sensuality. Samuels immersed herself in this deep pool of inspiration, gaining knowledge and experience. She emerged baptized with an indescribable sense of inspiration that comes from daily contact with timelessness, with greatness. She has held her own work against this standard ever since.
This unwavering standard coupled with Samuels’ natural artistic talent explain why she has received over twenty awards in juried exhibitions for her jewelry and paintings. Her work has appeared in over fifty publications, and her jewelry designs cited as spearheading global design trends. Her success culminated in receiving the national grand prize from the American Jewelry Design Council, naming her the year’s top new designer in America. More national awards followed.
“I do not follow the style of any particular artist or artistic movement. Rather, I seek out the quality of excellence in those visionaries who have gone before me, striving to achieve that degree of excellence in my own work. Some of my favorites are Gauguin for his use of color and symbolism, Cezanne for his brushwork, the Italian Renaissance masters for their sensitivity, and the Etruscans for their simplicity of line and form.” Samuels’ paintings are bold, representational works often bordering on impressionism and colorful fauvism.
After returning to Italy to study with masters both living and past, she has made her home in her canonic house and church. “When I first leased the place, there was no electricity, no running water. Bats flew in over my head through its broken windows. I was camped out in more of a grotto than a house.” She has been carefully rescuing the building from the elements while allowing the exquisite views and local color to permeate her paintings. This symbiotic relationship between place and artist has culminated in Samuels’ most recent body of paintings in oil and watercolor, works begun in situ, later completed on the altar of her abandoned church. Her images are saturated with the valley’s atmosphere, its luminosity and flowing contours. Moving back and forth between the natural cathedral of ancient oaks and her own personal temple has been a powerful reminder to the artist of her own sensuality and spirituality. “This is why I sought out this place – a harmonious combination of nature and chapel. I place an unfinished canvas on the altar, step back, feel the sacred, lift the brush, actively awaiting that gift that all artists hope for – the possibility of creating something that delights and astonishes oneself. I have been very fortunate here…”
Samuels divides her time between the Pacific Northwest and her studio in Italy.