K. Imperial Fine Art is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of the work of Sam Still.

Still is obsessed with contours and repetition. The stoic and defined shapes of his work change slightly and progressively with each new creation while hand-burnishing ink and paper with only an agate stone adding immeasurable complexities. An upbringing can foster important impressions.

Reared in the 60s and the son of a tool and dye maker, it’s the lines of the automobile fenders and hoods and trunks [specifically, the 1961 Lincoln Continental of the JFK assassination] that have fueled the contours of his works and the many hours spent in his dad’s machine shop fed the need for manipulation of materials and substrate. But formulaic by no means, every piece is conceptual and highly personal: “I behave as a machine, soothing repetition of my own design. Every drawing is exclusively for my pleasure. This is the most enjoyable leg of the journey I take in bringing a drawing out of my thoughts into the world. The journey is a trance that allows me, through repetitive actions in the making process, to escape into a world, my world, a selfishly constructed world.” – Sam Still.

The space he creates in his mind while lost in the process frees him to wander and contemplate the world around him. As is reflected in this new series. “Vessels, Covers, & Bombs” contain, mask, and erode the sad, the unjust, the destructive human situations of our time. Each work in the show will hold a situation or cover an indecency or drop a pandemic while each work is also free and autonomous of meaning. Simultaneously lush and devoid.

Born in Philadelphia in 1953, raised in South Carolina, Still settled in New Orleans and later New York City for close to 20 years. He now lives and works in upstate New York.