Again, an earlier painting of mine. These canvases were specially made for me so that I could fit three squares in a row. These are the paintings that you will be looking at when you wait before a procedure or return to the same room for recovery. I chose all soothing blues and greens to calm you down and provide you with relaxing energy. I had fun pairing these two canvases by choosing colors that I thought were interesting. The three colors of the top canvas are predominantly green with a hint of blue for the middle one. The bottom row is primarily blue with no green in it. The middle two panels for both are the bluest and unite the two pieces visually. I used a progression from one color to the next for the top row, and I used a symmetrical color scheme with very dark Prussian blue to anchor the two bottom frames of the lower canvas. The blue color is more of a solid color and the symmetry also helps make the lower canvas the anchor of the two pieces. I am not an intellectual about my paintings but I am explaining how I made my choices which are very deliberate in order to evoke a visceral, emotional response.
This paired painting was done early in my painting career and hangs in the back office/library/conference room. They hang on opposing walls of this larger room. You can see all the hallmarks of my style: squares, tone on tone color, use of neutral grays, paired paintings. Ok, so I am a bit predictable huh? At least you can say I am consistent for what I like aesthetically. Ok, shortly you will see I changed it up for my spa.
I have had many of my patients and visitors to my office say that this is their favorite painting and threaten (jokingly) that they were going to steal this piece from my office. I like it too but it is not my favorite. I really like the color mix and how I alternated thinned out paints with opaque paints to create an almost fabric like feel to it, hence the title Madras. I also love the emerald green, the orange red, the golden-brown yellow, and dark blue black colors; each one is so very unique and they all work together as a perfect ensemble. The painting is a 4′ x 4′ in dimensions and sits in the hallway down toward the clean room, kitchen, and back office.
For my mother’s 70th birthday, my family ventured to Boston where we spent a couple of days relaxing. Carrying my little Leica with me, I looked for any opportunity to express a little creativity. Here are some fun photos that I took. Hope you enjoy!
For me art is not about the intellectual but about the visceral. It needs to give me a one two punch when I look at it. In short, I probably could be better classified as a graphic artist or designer than simply a conventional artist. I love the use of color, line, and design, and the juxtaposition of these basic elements. I subscribe to the philosophy that less is more, and minimalist art appeals to my sense of restraint and order. There is no better artist that expresses the power of pure, unadulterated color and geometry at its most fundamental level than Ellsworth Kelly. His forms and colors saturate my brain and awaken my senses. I have named a paired painting that I did after him “Ellsworth”. He is in the upper pantheon of artists that I admire.
Honestly, I could see myself being an industrial designer if I had an alternative life. I am in love with everything Apple and channel Steve Jobs when I go onstage to present. My entire office is filled with Apple Computers. As men, we don’t have a lot of style options other than our clothing, hairstyle, watches, and for me eyewear. The two companies that artistically I love are Lindberg (which I mostly wear day in and day out) and Theo (which is for some funky fun weekend wear). Lindberg, which has won countless design awards, is from Danish origin; and Theo is from Belgium. To me, these two companies express incredibly high quality in design but also an amazing artistic flair as well.
Another discipline that has had a profound influence on me and that I relish deeply is architecture. Working with Gary Williams, my architect, who built the Willow Bend Wellness Center, my building, I only provided an impact on this talented individual by suggesting the great influences that have inspired me: Richard Meier, Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Louis Kahn, Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, among many other greats. I think most architects work with clients that fail to appreciate their work, and I certainly did not and do not with Gary Williams.
Out of many of the architects I admire I truly love Richard Meier. A huge reason is that I see him as a bridge between modern and contemporary architecture, carrying forward the legacy of many of the mid-century modern giants but with a more contemporary flair. His spare white modular aesthetic, subtle curvilinear design and use of glass entrance me. I love great architects who can create a remarkable space within which to live, work, breathe, and meditate.
Another artist who has profoundly shaped my aesthetic vision is Agnes Martin who died in 2004 at the age of 92. Her spare art style with grids, lines, and subtle pastel washes evoke a deep Eastern spirituality that I adore. She conveys so much gentle artistry through “less is more” philosophy. Perhaps many find her paintings to invoke ennui, but I am captivated, inspired, and awed by her work. I would encourage anyone who loves this painting and who is not familiar with her work to investigate it more thoroughly. She is a beacon of peace in a tempestuous sea of overdone, over the top art that dominates much of contemporary art. I simply love her aesthetic vision. In fact, I named one of my pieces “Agnes” after her, which I hope to photograph and share here on this website.
Here is an inspirational interview with her so that you can understand her aesthetic philosophy more thoroughly:
Me Standing at the Mass MOCA Lewitt Exhibit in North Adams, MA
My Love of Sol Lewitt by Dr. Sam Lam
I am always looking for inspiration as an artist and no one has had as much a profound impact in my work as the late Sol Lewitt. He was the pioneer of the conceptual movement of the 1960s in which he championed the idea over the execution. I myself have loved the idea of the concept because the two times that I get most excited about my work is when I think of an original idea and when I sit comfortably looking at my work before the final touch of paint even dries. Lewitt provides pristine geometry, vivid colors, and restraint. Although I like Jackson Pollock, it is not how I enjoy looking at paintings. It is too uncontrolled for how I do a painting. I like order and balance through control but through some expression of painterliness. Lewitt just does it for me. Great stuff. I have seen a lot of his retrospectives but if anyone has time to make it to Mass MOCA in western Massachusetts, you will see the amazing (almost overkill) Lewitt exhibit there that opened on November 16, 2008 and will run for 25 years.
Here is a fun video showing the installation of a wall painting:
This painting was done recently but is reminiscent of my earlier work that was made by taping off areas to create absolute controlled perfection and to remove the artist’s hand entirely. Using thick acrylic paint on a canvas of 4′ x 6′, I focused on colors that really worked together. It is so hard to convey to you why I like the colors and why they work but they simply do. Also like many of my paintings, they were created on Adobe Illustrator during my “sketching” phase in which I also drew in the fireplace and background wall to see how that painting would fit within its site-specific context and I could see that it would work well.
Once I got that down, I worked with basic color layouts, which I then refined by holding tubes of orange, blue, green, and yellow paint in my hand until the ensemble of colors hit me as the correct match. I can’t explain why almost no other orange, green, blue, or yellow would work, but they wouldn’t. The dark blue and dark green provide a contrast against the bright and solid orange and yellow colors. I also alternated cool colors with warm colors. My cool colors are dark, and my warm colors are bright. I also think the curvilinear design works to break the monotony of four vertical stripes and suggests a fun playfulness. If you look carefully, you will also notice that I bent the lines differently on top and bottom so that they are not a perfect banana shape. That adds a small degree of visual intrigue.
The background was painted with a canvas-like beige color called Titan Buff (made by Golden paints, which I use for 95% of my paints). I used Titan Buff also for the background for the featured painting Amsterdam. I think it creates an amazingly softer feel than the stark white gessoed background that I typically employed in the past. I was thinking about framing it with a floating frame that you see oftentimes in museums, i.e., a frame that would sit an inch outside of the outer perimeter of the frame, but was advised by my interior designer not to do it, as it would disturb the visual purity of the work. I agree with him. When I work with someone with good taste that is in alignment with my own taste, I rarely dictate anything but let that person be creative. If someone that I work with has poor or no taste, I micromanage them to the point that they probably would never want to work with me again (which is a good thing!) The background paint that my interior designer chose of bluish-gray green is amazingly sophisticated and works so well as a “neutral” color to enhance this painting without competing with it. As I talked about in describing some other paintings regarding masculine and feminine energy, this painting is very masculine in its energy. It almost has to be because it is the dominant force in my great room and anchors the room very well.
What was very interesting is that my friend Terry Timm came by and said, “Sam, can I ask you why you hung your painting the way you did?” I had no idea what he meant, but he explained that the orange (which was originally on the left) did not frame the painting well because it sat at the end of the wall near a door and that the darker blue would do better. I turned the painting around and sure enough it subtly worked better in the room. That Sunday, I rewired the painting to hang as you see it now. That is a good example of listening to someone who has great taste (and I have been to his house and he is an avid art collector) and trusting another artist’s instinct.
