The Creators: Sam Guindon's artistic palette

Painter Sam Guindon is an earnest young man who paints light with the skill of John Singer Sargent. Guindon’s attention to technique harks back to an earlier time when artists studied under a master, learned anatomy, perspective, how to make their own pigment, and closely observed the work of great artists. Guindon has studied oil painting since he was nineteen. In a recent show of his paintings in his hometown of Norfolk, Connecticut, Guindon sold 40 of the 42 paintings he exhibited.

Guindon’s sketchbooks are windows into his creative mind and a well-traveled life, packed with vignettes, ink drawings, observations and thoughts written in the margins. His subjects range from sketches done in gouache at the National Gallery, to ink drawings of vine-covered trees in Costa Rica, to the interior of an airplane drawn with the perspective of a fisheye lens, to colorful bottles of hot sauce. Currently Guindon is teaching art at the Compass Atelier in Maryland.

Artwork created by Guindon.Jennifer Almquist

The Creators Interview:

Jennifer Almquist: What are your plans after you come home to Norfolk this winter?

Sam Guindon: Picasso said, “There’s no great art without great solitude.” I plan to spend a year solo creating one thousand paintings on paper in Santa Fe, Norway, Costa Rica, and Ireland.

We went to Costa Rica, where my dad is from, for a year when I was in 3rd grade. I will be there for three months doing some work on our house this winter. I’m going do some plein air (in the open air) painting in the jungle.

JA: Tell me your earliest memory of wanting to draw or paint. How old were you?

SG: My first memories are very illustrative, light-filled - as if they are paintings. The first drawings I did, when I was two, were very imaginative. I drew a lot of monsters as my earliest subjects. I liked drawing monsters because the anatomy is never incorrect. You have the freedom to just draw whatever you imagine.

JA: How have your paintings evolved?

SG: Only more recently did my art come around to being representative of anything. I guess it was more just a desire to create things, as opposed to capturing things. Now the desire to create has been fused with the desire to record the world. In that sense, especially with plein air paintings, you can capture your experience. I think the sketchbook is similar in that it’s a record of my journey throughout the year.

Work from Sam Guindon's sketchbook.Jennifer Almquist

JA: Your sketchbooks are wonderful. Where did you draw these?

SG: Those are copies from the National Gallery of different artists. The sketchbook has turned into half sketchbook/ half journal which is fun to look back on. It feels more lived in.

JA: When did you realize that you wanted to go to school for this?

SG: I went to a liberal arts school, Hamilton College. I was not sold on being an art major. My mom told me when I was a kid that I should do something that I loved as a career. That pushed me to have the courage to study art.

JA: Did you have a teacher that influenced you?

SG: My advanced painting teacher was the first to introduce a more traditional kind of education. She had us do master studies, taught us about different pigments, their history, how you use them.

JA: What was your plan after college?

SG: Taking classes online through Compass. My teacher has changed the way I paint. He taught me how to mix color in a scientific way.

Artwork created by Guindon.Jennifer Almquist

JA: In your recent show in Norfolk of smaller paintings, you sold out! How do you explain that success?

SG: The new paintings have a different feeling, a little more raw, more accessible. Before I had only shown my studio work. I learn more about painting from these smaller, direct observation pieces.

JA: Your paintings are of everyday things like tractors and bulldozers, workshops, hydrants, and your own sneakers. What draws you to your subject matter?

SG: Those are my dad’s tractors - they’re from Belarus. They are Soviet era and have a lot of personality. I remember as a kid working with these immensely powerful things that could crush you so easily. They are rusty, they misfire in the winter, they’ve got hydraulic leaks. If you’re a kid who looks closely at things, they have meaning that other people don’t feel or see. It is a shame that we lose our child’s eye, through which everything has meaning and beauty. That is something that I think about, finding a sort of equanimity by just finding beauty in uncelebrated things, quiet things.

JA: Did you like reading books when you were little?

SG: I loved reading books, especially fantasy. In Costa Rica life is slow, so we spent a lot of time just reading from the old library, and drawing. I love Percy Jackson and Tintin. I just learned Andy Warhol and Herge, the author of Tintin, were good friends!

JA: Do you like the paintings of John Singer Sargent?

SG: He was one of the painters that got me into this. He’s the gateway drug to more traditional painters. It is cool to see his sketches because you can see the artist’s hand. He was good at showing you what he wanted you to see in his paintings.

Artwork created by Guindon.Jennifer Almquist

JA: Your favorite artists?

SG: Jeremy Mann, Mark Boedges, Richard Schmid, Antonio Lopez Garcia, Rackstraw Downes, Quang Ho, George Bellows, Camille Corot, Gustave Caillebotte, Peter Paul Rubens, and Franz Kline.

JA: Do you dream in paintings?

SG: If I am working on a painting intensely, or drawing, then I will dream about it.

JA: There is much creative shorthand in the world now, using artificial intelligence, digital cameras, or 3D printing. Your ability to paint, using your mind and your hands, is going to be an increasingly rare skill. Will you resist the ease of modern forms of image creation?

SG: Different factors make it rare. The more art that I make, the more insulated I am against like that kind of influence. Because you really can’t be making something while distracted in a million ways by your phone.