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about the artistSam Hodge’s work explores the relationship between the natural and unnatural. She is interested in the material processes of creation, both of the natural forms that provide inspiration for her work and of the works themselves. She is also interested in the human agent as selector, collector and interpreter of images; making choices that give value to the selected and making connections which imbue the ambiguous with meaning.Born and bought up on the Kent coast, the creative power of water to carve shapes and patterns in the landscape has had a lasting influence on her work. Estuarine mudflats and eroded stones provide the starting point for many of her paintings and etchings, which are made using analogous processes of erosion and sedimentation to create images of emergent complexity. She is fascinated by the conventions and appearance of scientific collections and illustrations. Like the creators of cabinets of curiosity she collects specimens of both natural and unnatural history, combing the pavements and roads of Hackney, beaches, her house and studio, for appealing pieces of rubbish. This is done in a subjective rather than systematic way, to understand the process of selection as much as the objects themselves. The objects are then transformed, for example by pressing and etching them into a plate in a manner similar to fossilization. This metamorphosis results in images which blur the boundaries between the manmade, the geological and the biological.
Sam Hodge lives and works in Hackney. She studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University before qualifying as
a Painting Conservator at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Since then, as well as working for many years as a
painting conservator, she has studied etching at the Princes Drawing School and Morley College and fine art at
the City Literary Institute.
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