About the Artist

Bio

Samuelle Richardson is a painter and sculptor who is based in Los Angeles where she works from her studio at Keystone Art Space and the Brewery Artist Lofts.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish Literature after studying in Spain at the University of Valencia and in Cuernavaca Mexico at CIDOC.  It was during her time in Spain, immersed in Renaissance Art, that she had a change of heart for a future in foreign language.  After completing her degree, she embarked on a new vocation based on art and design and enrolled in the Fashion Design AAS program at FIT in New York. 
She began her professional life in the New York fashion industry after graduating from FIT, with additional training from Parsons School of Design, School of Visual Arts, and New York Academy of Art.   
Her work assignments in fashion design included foreign travel and exposure to cultural wonders that enriched her vision.  This was also a time when art-based projects in clothing design could lead to full-time work as a studio artist.  She took the opportunity to advance by creating hand rendered story boards and original artwork designed for apparel and textiles.  Through the scope of her work and connections in the design industry, she became an editorial illustrator for publishing houses in New York and Milan Italy.   Relocating from New York to California, marked the beginning of Richardson’s career as a painter and sculptor.  Residencies and awards include Artist in Residence, Studio System II Torrance Art Museum, Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, and the Visiting Artists & Scholars Program, American Academy in Rome. Richardson’s work has been reviewed in A Dilettante Arts & Culture Review, Artillery, Riot Material, Diversions LA, Voyager LA, LA Weekly Arts, Art and Cake and OC Weekly.
Solo exhibits include Ghost Dogs in Peace on Earth, MOAH Lancaster, CA, Alphabet City, Marin MOCA, Novato, CA, and Icarus and Dedalus Paintings, Momi Tobi, San Francisco, CA.
Public art collections include Alameda County, CA, US Embassy American Center Library, Rangoon, Myanmar, Heroes and Hearts, San Francisco General Hospital, San Francisco, CA and Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA.

Statement

I am inclined toward the ancient world where the human figure was venerated in art.  
These naïve works hold a certain poignance for me as they are free of dogma and rich in originality of design.  They take form with more mystery and less rightness, and one grasps the heartfelt connection between maker and subject.
Good design, I believe, runs parallel to humor, as it joins familiar form with the offbeat. 
Design is fundamental to my visual language, and I work out ideas by drawing my subject upside down.  This orientation reveals only line and shape and from that lack of bias, I draw it as I see it.  When I turn the drawing right side up, I see a more authentic reading than the one I might have drawn otherwise.
I picture the crush and pull of the human form as an arrangement of shapes.  Beyond the façade lies a deep interior and when choosing a subject, I skip over the pretty faces, in favor of those who have lived their years.
Seeking ways to break free of ingrained practices, I work with new material and invent new techniques, allowing for the rough and incomplete.  I have come to value the handmade object and the beautiful mistake for all that it reveals in the human hand and investment of effort.
After seeing images of Diego Rivera’s paper mâché skeletons I was inspired to improvise on the medium, and I worked out a technique based on cardboard, shredded junk-mail, staples, and glue.  This led to my present work, based on classical figures in contemporary paper mâché and repurposed cardboard.