|
Various |
|
August 2010 |
 
David Szeto Magazine Issue 1
  
Telegraph Magazine September 2008, Home of Hotelier Kit Kemp
 
Elle Deco October 2003, Global Finds
  
Telegraph Magazine May 2006, Simon Finch Modern Classic
|
Back to top
Back to top
|
Artnet |
|
'Flowers for Sam' by Joe La Placa, August 2003 |
|
Samantha McEwen's exhibition of florally inspired abstract paintings proves that the allure of
the flower in its many guises is still irresistible. "Garlands" is McEwen's first exhibition in
almost ten years. To celebrate her return, a glamorous crowd descended on the otherwise sedate Cross
Street Gallery in London's Islington district, the area where Prime Minister Tony Blair lived before
he moved into 10 Downing Street (and now better known for its multitude of ethnic restaurants and
designer fashion boutiques). Spilling out from the tiny gallery were B-list YBAs, local waifs,
thespians (the happening Almeida Theatre is around the corner), bankers, a sprinkling of film stars,
flocks of family aristos and terribly-terribly toffs, all captured for the pages of Tatler magazine by
Leon St Amour. Appropriately, the evening was propelled by a generous flow of flowery pink champagne.
|
|
Then there was the lady herself. More Scottish heather than English rose, McEwen's beauty rivals that
of the flowers she paints. And her pedigree is just as striking. A descendent on one side of the American
Astor dynasty, she is the daughter of late Rory McEwen, one of the most prolific and poetic flower
painters of his generation.
|
|
In early 1980s, Sam was one of New York's most intoxicating femme fatales. A down-by-law member of the
East Village Club 57 scene, McEwen hung with some of best artists of her generation, including Keith
Haring (with whom she shared an apartment), Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
|
|
McEwen's paintings, resembling solarized versions of Andy Warhol's "Flowers," are painted on handmade
aquarelle paper provided to the artist's father by his friend, the American artist Jim Dine. Given all
the enticements, no wonder the exhibition sold out during the first hour.
|
Back to top
|
Tatler Magazine |
|
July 2003 |
Sam McEwen is wearing clumpy leather biker boots, a black leather jacket and scarlet lipstick. She is
standing behind the till of a biker's shop in Notting Hill (where she occassionaly works), surrounded by
enough deluxe windcheaters and crash helmets to equip a posse of Hell's Angels or Sloaney lady bikers.
Sam, who is descended from the American Astor dynasty as well as one of Scotland's most highbrow bohemian
families, is the kind of sultry and glamorous shop girl you only see in Hollywood movies.
But behind her Lara Croft image is an eager flower and bird painter. At her home in Shepherd's Bush are
rack upon rack of fish eagles, buck deer and large flowerheads that float almost like Buddhist lotuses on
fields of colour.
She particularly favours Hydrangeas. "They are pink more often than not," she says, "and I love the shape
of their petals - they are so perfectly formed." These are not the words of a botanist exactly, but then
Sam would be the first to admit that her fingers are more likely to be wrapped around a cup of coffee than
a trowel. "I only possess one plant and that's a geranium. It often looks as if it's dead and then I water
it and it springs back to life. There is a rythmn to it's existence that reflects my own," she laughs.
|
Photograph: Julian Anderson
|
|
It is no suprise that Sam should be drawn to painting flowers. Her father, the late Rory McEwen, was one of
the most prolific and poetic painters of his generation. I ask her what he would have thought of her efforts
"I suspect he would have hated them," she says, beaming. Rory had all the precision of a miniaturist but Sam's
pictures are flamboyant and impressionistic - more Monet than Margaret Mee.
|
|
Born in London in 1961, Sam studied in the States - philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College, and then painting,
at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She shared a flat in the Bowery with the graffiti artist Keith Haring,
was a good friend of Jean-Michel Basquait and also met Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol. She found the New
York artist's drive and eagerness for public acclaim impressive, but eventually decided there was no place like
home. "In Britain, the emphasis is so much more on the person rather than the job they do." Another reason for
her return was that many of the American artists died from AIDS and drugs. Multiple deaths are something that
Sam McEwen has become accustomed to: her father killed himself after a long battle with cancer when she was 22.
|
|
In the past, much has been made of the 'curse' of the McEwen's - that has led not only to Rory's untimely death
but also to those of other members of the family. Her father's brother James, a bird artist, died of cancer at
the age of 39; at much the same age, his younger brother, David, died of an aneurysm caused by excessive alcohol
consumption. Robin, his elder brother, died in his mid-50s. Then his nephew, James (Robin's son), shot himself
aged just 22, and shortly afterwards his sister, Katie, an artist, drowned while on holiday in Kenya, she was 25.
|
|
Coincidence? "My family did go through a period of tragedy and trauma - but it happens," she says sagely. "If
you trace it back to a cause, I think it was a shadow cast by the First World War. Even though my grandfather
survived, his world had changed and people like him just weren't equipped to teach their sons how to survive in
it."
|
|
Sam McEwen's paintings are at the Cross Street Gallery, 40 Cross Street, N1 (tel: 020 7226 8600), from 17 June.
|
Back to top
|
The Art Newspaper |
|
Sam McEwen: Garlands. Cross St Gallery, June 2003 |
|
Her father Rory McEwen may have been a leading botanical painter but although she has undoubtably inherited his
love of paints, Sam McEwen's giant watercolour blooms are a very different species to her father's meticulously
observed studies. In the 80s she cut a considerable dash in the New York art scene, sharing an apartment with
graffiti artist pals Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, and had her first solo show at the, then uber-trendy Tony
Shafrazi Gallery. Yet despite her surroundings, McEwen's work was never concerned with urban grit or razzmatazz.
She has always been a painter primarily concerned with the sensory effects of colour, and nowhere more so than in
her current show. There are none of the timid connotations of floral watercolours in these big, bold vivid melting
fields of colour, painted on twelve huge sheets of handmade acquarelle paper which come with an extra layer of
history, being given to Rory McEwen by his friend Jim Dine. In their own way these exuberant celebrations
communicate the spirit of flowers as accurately as those of her father (18 June - 14 July).
|
Back to top
|
Cross Street Gallery |
|
"Garlands", An Exhibition of Paintings by Sam McEwen, June 2003 |
|
It could be said of some people that they have green fingers. Of Sam McEwen it is no exaggeration to say that
flowers are in her blood. Her father, Rory McEwen, was the pre-eminent European botanical painter of the 20th
century. For Sam this relationship with our floral heritage is second nature, quite literally. But here is
where the family connection ends and her independent, wild, dramatic, interpretative path begins.
|
|
This strong visual language was nurtured in the avant-garde of the eighties New York art world where her fellow
students and later protaganists included Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, while her champions included the
international dealer Tony Shafrazi, the latter giving her her first one solo show.
|
|
But her love has always been watercolour, not a popular medium at that time, yet one that called her back again
and again. Two decades later she has finally embraced the traditional structure of the botanical watercolour,
albiet with a new millenium twist.
|
|
Taking as her starting point, she unearthed a box of 12 huge sheets of hand made aquarelle paper given to her
father by his friend, the American artist, Jim Dine. It was the beauty of the paper itself, the way it called
out for the subltety and rarity of watercolour, which brought her to produce what are being critically acclaimed
as her most exciting work yet.
|
|
Huge, striking portraits of barely discernable flowers, their colours rich with shocking pinks and dreamy blues,
form the centerpiece of the body of work. For the viewer it provides a window into an exotic world, one in which
this remarkable artist blossoms.
|
|
Sam McEwen was brought up in London and was educated at Sarah Lawrence and the School of Visual Arts in New York.
|
|
Her work is to be found in a diversity of locations ranging from the collections of Charles Saatchi to that of
Prince and Princess Michael of Greece.
|
|
Show runs from Wednesday 18th June and runs until Friday 4th July 2003.
|
Back to top
|
