Platform L.E.S. - Samantha French Art

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PLEASE NOTE: THIS SHOW WILL CLOSE DECEMBER 1st. Due to gallery issues. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Platform L.E.S. Gallery is pleased to present "Endless Summer," a series of recent paintings by Samantha French. These evocative paintings on canvas focus on swimmers emerging, playing, relaxing in an idyll of summer. As French states, the paintings explore "memories from my childhood summers spent immersed in the tepid lakes of northern Minnesota, I attempt to recreate the quiet tranquility of water and nature; of days spent sinking and floating, still and peaceful. These paintings are a link to my home and continual search for the feeling of the sun on my face and warm summer days at the lake."

The paintings pulse with life, as a swimmer measures the quality of a quick breath and slow underwater exhalation. They convey qualities of stillness yet within a realm of liquid motion, of new and fresh vision within a framework of nostalgia. They are carefully observed within a "photographic" sense of image, yet their compositions are very deliberately and delicately constructed. And the reach deep into the realm of memory, evoking a bliss of an underwater realm in service of play. We see innocence, directness, a realm apart from concern.

"A female figure is shown transitioning from water, a tangible, asphyxiating element, to air, a ubiquitous and invisible element that satisfies the lungs. French’s portrayal of this transition from a breathless realm to a space with which the lungs ally, exposes the rejuvenating and invigorating spirit of emerging from water after a swim. Her use of green and orange colors displays the reflection of the external world on the water’s surface and subtly foreshadows what the figure is about to encounter. The woman is on the cusp of inhaling as she exits the liquid kingdom, which subconsciously drives the viewer to inhale deeply along with her. Breath and memory become intertwined; as air travels throughout the viewer, so does remembrance of water excursions from childhood." - Julie Elliot

Samantha French is a painter based in New York City, although born and raised in Minnesota. She graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005, and has had solo shows in Provincetown, Minneapolis, Palm Springs, Connecticut. "Endless Summer" is her first New York solo show.