“Since his return from an art residency in Berlin in 2016 Sam Holt’s painting has developed an intensity and muscularity beyond the pared back gestural minimalist approach of former works. The palette has shifted from the pink, blue, green spectrum to a reduced, more neutral, not-quite monochrome range of blacks, white, grey, sand and silver. Where oil on raw unprimed linen has been Sam Holt’s characteristic medium, a range of mixed media random materials including mirror and tape with accretions of oil, acrylic spray paint and viscous pours of metallic emulsion characterizes the works on both board and canvas for ‘The distance between’. Tape harnesses shards of mirror to the surface of a diptych while elsewhere it serves to mask fine lines for a grid or corridors through a cumulus terrain of paint masses to reveal a strip of pristine raw linen” – Barbara Dowse, curator.
Sam Holt, The Distance Between, until April 1, Artereal Gallery, Rozelle, Sydney.
