Dr. Sam Lam Art

Rugby Painting by Dr. Sam Lam

This acrylic piece reminiscent of a rugby shirt hangs in the hallway just adjacent to my salon’s entrance.  The canvas size was custom-made for me by Stretch and Frame in Dallas, Texas.  I would highly recommend them to any artist who does not want to stretch his/her own frames, as they are all acid-free, double primed, gallery-wrapped, thick wood frame, hand stretched, and nylon mixed (to keep the stretch), and as stated can be custom designed for you.  You can also specify how you want the gallery wrapping so that depending on how you hang the canvas, the wrap will not be folded over on the sides but on the top and bottom of the canvas to be more invisible.  The gallery wrapping is so beautiful, most of my pieces hang naked without a frame.

I always love the combination of blue and orange.  That just works well.  The use of dark Prussian blue and grays help to anchor this piece and serve as “neutral” elements.  Line width and basic design work were constructed on Adobe Illustrator before committing brush to canvas.  Hope you enjoy!

Rugby Painting by Dr. Sam Lam

My landscape architect says this pair of drawings is his favorite.  I like them too.  Not my favorite but I like them since they are the only time I dabbled in colored pencils.  The grid is the same one used for the watercolor pieces but transformed for a different design here.  I like again the juxtaposition of  the ordered grid and the painterly internal strokes that make up each colored square.  They hang in my laser hair removal room in my spa.

Geometric Watercolor Painting by Dr. Samuel Lam

This pair of watercolor paintings express rigid geometry, which is softened through the medium of watercolor.  As you can see, the pairing uses inverted areas of color, i.e., the blue canvas uses the primarily convex side to shade in and the pinkish canvas uses the concave portion of the same shape.  This pair sits in the hallway of the clinical skin care side of my spa.

Airbrush Paint on Absorbent Ground Painting by Dr. Sam Lam

This painting hangs upstairs on the way to the Solberg Center.  It was created by thinning down airbrush paint with water and painting a thin coating of this mixture onto absorbent ground to create the watercolor on canvas feel.  I experimented until I was able to create this unique effect.  I then painted a thick, painterly acrylic square that matched tone on tone for each canvas in this tetraptych.

Colored Pen Drawing by Dr. Samuel Lam

This colored pen drawing is now split between upstairs in a vacant space and in my spa manager’s office downstairs.  This is the only time I used colored pens to express myself.  The piece is done on cold-pressed watercolor paper.  I think it is a fun piece that emphasizes both color and line.  It is hard to see in this photograph but the lines are a combination of red and orange interspersed.

Optimism Painting by Dr. Sam Lam

This painting is situated downstairs in the separate lobby entrance.  It is entitled “Optimism”, as the four bright colors extend outward in four directions may suggest.  The use of grays to act as an inner frame has been matched to each specific color for optimal and optical effect.

Ok, that is not the name for it but I don’t really have a name for this one.  It is however one of my favorite pieces, and it is inspired by the work of Twombly in which he creates chalkboard-like paintings.  I used a swirly charcoal gray acrylic as the background with a yellow border on the sides of the canvas. I then used oil pastels to create the chalky lines and the yellow and silver splotches.  Again, the presence of painterly handfeel and the rigidity of the geometric pattern is a repeated hallmark in my work.  I just love that combination!  I think I am going to steal this one for my condo!  Right now it is sitting upstairs in a vacant office.  Ouch!

Linoleum Print on Canvas Triptych by Dr. Sam Lam

I bought these three canvases then decided I was sick of painting and only wanted to do paper drawings.  After many many drawings, I started to do print work using linoleum.  I then thought that I could somehow create a linoleum print onto canvas.  That took some finagling.  I first realized that the linoleum block that I had was too small to fit so I then found out that I could use it to cover exactly 1/4th the size of the canvas.  By doing so I inverted the block to create various patterns on each canvas.  By making an expanding grid pattern on the linoleum I could have a line pattern that radiated toward greater width in one canvas and the reverse in the adjacent canvas.  In order to transfer the ink from the linoleum to the canvas, I had to jerry rig two cardboard pieces with a ton of chopsticks between them so that the ink roller would not bend into the canvas during rolling.  Somehow it all worked out!  I love the use of orange both because it goes well with both blue and yellow but also because it adds complexity since it is not the expected primary color of red that would normally be paired with yellow and blue.  I also like the purple blue color that is truly unique.  Again the juxtaposition of rigidity and handfeel is a pleasant one for me and a recurrent theme in many of my later works.

Magenta Painting by Dr. Samuel Lam

This acrylic painting that measures 4′ x 4′ is perhaps the most explicit homage to Ellsworth Kelly in its geometric purity and use of bright colors.  However, the work is all mine, and I love the interplay of magenta, yellow, and green.  Somehow those 3 colors really go well together and certainly keeps the viewer awake!  By the way, I have not put all of my paintings on this website.  There would be too many (as perhaps there already are).  I just selected many that would show different media and different stages in my evolution as an artist.  The painting currently hangs inside the salon’s break room.

Sol I and II Paintings by Dr. Sam Lam

As discussed in my inspiration section, Sol Lewitt as an artist has had a profound influence in my work, perhaps more than any other single artist.  These paintings were done by using thinned down watercolor pieces for Sol II and regular acrylic paint for Sol I.  They hang in the women and men’s bathrooms upstairs, respectively.