Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art (BA Fine Art), Sam Drake has been awarded the RSA New Contemporaries Selected Artist Prize (2017), the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts Exhibition Award (2016), the Richard Ford Award (2016), the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize (2016), and in 2017 was the beneficiary of a grant from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation before completing his MFA at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Art and Design.
In rich, nocturnal tones, Drake’s figures find themselves dappled in dwindling natural light. Centered on notions of mystery, memory and place, these are paintings that are frequently referential, drawing on wellsprings of historical, political, and literary history. His works evoke the waking hours of dusk and those retiring hours bathed in moonlight; each piece, which range from the figurative to the wholly abstract, are bound together by a sense of disquieting.
