Sam Birchman: A New Retrospective

Exhibition Title: "Sam Birchman, A New Retrospective"

Exhibition Duration: Second Friday December 12 - January 3, 2015 5PM

Vernissage: Second Friday December 12 6-8PM participant with
www.belltownartwalk.com

"Sam Birchman, A New Retrospective" combines new paintings and drawings by the artist with favorites from the artists' ten-year career.

Sam Birchman creates environments that evoke a confusion of feelings, a jilted lover in drag executes an arabesque somewhere in Birchman's day job world as a cabinetmaker.  We see archetypal characterizations of love lost, amongst the machinery of the labor he must perform in order to sustain his way of life. In real life Birchman makes furniture and wooden cabinetry, to pay for his studio in the Vain Salon complex of art work spaces.  Other compositions depict subconscious manifestations; tubes of toothpaste squirt languid ellipses across moonscapes, a co-worker's legs are actually slices of sausage, but the victim has a catatonic smirk whilst his limbs are
being carved for consumption.  We find a morbid curiosity in sneaking a glimpse at Birchman's paintings.  if we collect his work, it is only if we are ready to take a long bath and cleanse his beautiful, captivating dystopia from us after making contact with it.

Sam Birchman is my friend.  I find his paintings singularly unique, and executed with an absolute perfection of technical skill, not over-wrought, a production value that is comforting and portrays a spontaneous energy, an exceptionally well-conceived color-mixing, and drafted with acute understanding of academic process.

Sam Birchman has exhibited widely in the Seattle area, including with Francine Seders and co-exhibits with his father Fred Birchman and brother Julian Birchman on occasion.  Sam is a graduate of Evergreen State College, Olympia, where he studied oil painting.