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

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.

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.

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.

This is one of my favorite pieces of art.  It currently hangs in the reception area of AVC upstairs.  It is a charcoal piece on cold-pressed watercolor paper that expresses a sinuous line that is both graphically clean but not smudge-free.  I love the hint of painterliness that invades the sense of order.  I love that juxtaposition!  It is at once organic and representational as well as abstract.

Charcoal Drawing