Dr. Sam Lam Art

Toward the tail end of my experimenting with tons of watercolor paper (pencils, watercolor, pens, etc.), I started to really love linoleum prints.  I worked on this 2 wave and 3 wave pairing, creating 10 prints in total and giving away one for a charity event (I think the only piece of art I have ever parted with, as I could make more.)  I love the straight lines and the painterly feel of the paint.  The colors are vibrant and well paired.  The magenta pink with the silver on one wall, and on the accompanying wall the purple blue with the gold.  These prints hang in my front bathroom near my reception area.  I also have a different pairing upstairs in the anti-aging center’s blood draw room.

Again, a paired painting that represents an earlier piece of artwork in my evolution as an artist that hangs in my third clinical treatment room.  I named the painting after the Latin goddess Flora for flower, as they appear to have the appearance of flowers.  I really love this piece because I love the colors.  I also enjoyed mixing the white into the colors so as to attain the tone on tone progression of colors.  Again, you can see the inversion of colors from dark to light going inward in one “flower” and the reverse scheme on the other, a favorite visual device of mine.

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.

Paris Painting by Dr. Sam Lam

Sunrise/Sunset Painting by Dr. Sam Lam

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.

Madras Painting by Dr. Sam Lam

New Painting #4 in My Home by Dr. Sam Lam

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.

New Painting #3 in My Home by Dr. Sam Lam

This painting was created on raw, ungessoed canvas using thinned down, single layered watercolor paint.  I was inspired by the artist Morris Louis who created similar media pieces.  In fact, a few years ago I was in Washington D.C. and was at the Hirshhorn Museum and saw that they were opening a Morris Louis exhibit.  Unfortunately, it had not opened yet, and I was sneaking a peek through semi-occluded and roped off areas but was mesmerized.  There was an adjacent gallery that had other painters working in this medium, and I was able to get within inches staring at the beauty of the bled-through paint on the burlap canvas.  This painting is a much softer work for me that conveys both the rigid geometry of which I am fond and also a very serious degree of painterliness that I now enjoy.  The bleeding of the paint into the unprimed canvas provides a very raw and finished feel at the same time.  I chose these colors to transmit a sense of tranquility that is more feminine offset by the more yang-like geometry.  The brushed silver frame and the background eggplant colored wall really make this piece sing.  For those elements, I give full credit to my interior designer who picked them for me.

New Painting #2 in My Home by Dr. Sam Lam

I love this painting.  I did it a few years ago and had it in one of my work spaces until I realized it would truly work better at home.  I started with a very strong, bright firehouse red paint to cover this canvas that measure 4′ x 6′ in dimensions.  I was inspired by one of my favorite painters, Agnes Martin, who paints for those who do not know in squares and works with lines that fill up her squares.  I have always been enchanted with multimedia elements so I used oil pastels to create the lines that arc across the canvas.  As I mentioned in painting #1 for my home, I am trying to combine painterliness with rigidity.  The pastels afford me that expression by creating an almost crumbly feel to the surface that looks child-like but remains imposing due to the rigid linearity of the construct.  I like the fact that the painting works with primary colors of red, blue, and yellow but has an added complexity by virtue of the use of gold and silver oil pastels that bisect each of the yellow and blue lines, respectively.  I paired the yellow and the gold and the blue and silver to keep things that are somewhat tone on tone in feel. As I have mentioned in describing my other paintings, I love the use of metallics to create a more complex piece while remaining more constrained in my color palette.  The painting is framed over by a thick acrylic box for both visual appeal but also practical necessity as the oil pastel is very easily smeared even with a gentle touch of the finger.  Also, I would love to give credit to my interior designer Roger for picking the dark brown accent walls that offset my painting tremendously well and contrasts amazingly with the white furniture that you see hinted at along the periphery of the photo.

New Painting #1 in My Home by Dr. Sam Lam

This painting was done with egg tempura on cold-pressed watercolor paper and stands in the hallway on the way to my bedroom.  The piece is pressed and floated between thick, Lucite, acrylic blocks.  I wanted to do something on paper that used a much thicker and opaque feel than watercolors after having finished a series of watercolor pieces for my spa (which I will post here shortly).  Egg tempura was the perfect medium.  In this piece you can see that I blended the feeling of handmade painterliness with the precision of defined geometry.  Over the past 2 years I have moved away from rigid geometry in many of my paintings and allowed my hand to be expressed.  Given my desire for retaining some geometric order, I still have relatively rigidly defined lines.  I like the color combination of violet, brown, and yellow.  In short, it just works.  I have to give credit though to my interior designer who happened to be at my home as I was working on this piece and suggested the magic brown that I think really makes this piece sing and anchors it by serving as an almost neutral color.  Putting the brown color as my central element allows me to make a strong visual anchor that does not make this painting too colorful, something I am always working on is to reduce my color spectrum so that you can appreciate the colors in front of you.  Although I love Sol Lewitt as an artist, I find his later works that use the entire rainbow kaleidoscope of colors to be overwhelming (perhaps his intention) than I would otherwise desire for my work.  Perhaps I shall change in the coming years, as I already have but this work exemplifies my current thinking on how I design and create my paintings now.

Kimono-Acrylic on canvas Painting, by Dr Sam Lam
This painting began with a love for Japanese art and culture, hence a Kimono, but also for my passion for modern abstraction.  I worked with all metallic colors that reminded me of a glittery kimono but that also served as a more “neutral” palette that would be less shocking to the eye than say primary red, blue, and yellow.  The central waistband of the Kimono is painted with copper color acrylic paint.  The breast plate is painted using two types of gold paint, and the sleeves are made of stainless steel and silver paint.  The skirt is anchored with a more neutral bone black color.  This painting hangs between floors 1 and 2 of my building as a gateway to the second floor. It is created as an intersection of three adjoining canvases.

Kimono-Acrylic on canvas, 96 x 96″