Daffodil show a definite departure for Williams-Chapelsky

Samantha Williams-Chapelsky has put her Juicy days behind her and has moved on to a new artistic vista. You could say that things are looking way, way up for her with her Elemental Sky series.

The artistic stretch has as much to do with differing her technique, specifically her medium of choice. Whereas before she was creating three-dimensional textures by practically squeezing every last drip and dollop of paint out of each tube – hence the Juicy moniker – here she is now is sticking closer to two-dimensional images by employ far less of a much different paint and it’s all being applied to a new kind of surface to boot.

She said that she’s always ready to mix things up.

“I always ebb and flow in where my inspiration comes from. For me, I really wanted to find something that was new and different and try that new set of materials to explore a different path. I always feel that as an artist you need to grow and your work needs to change with you as you grow and as you change yourself. I think it’s important to challenge yourself and I am one for loving challenges,” she began.

There were some great limitations with that series, she admitted, with the greatest probably being that she had to use “so much stuff.”

“One of my biggest things was ‘OK, I can do this and make stuff with texture but what if I took the texture away? Can I still create that feeling of this really deep contemporary style landscape that is typically the Alberta landscape?’ By finding these new materials, I was really able to unleash this new way of working for me, a very intuitive way of working. It’s a very spur of the moment haphazard way of working, seeing what works.”

For all that, she is now working with TerraSkin, a stone-based paper, and acrylic washes mixed with alcohol sprays. The media make for more vibrant and saturated images. You’re still enjoying the Alberta landscape in the way that you’ve come to know and expect from the artist but with a brand new and brilliant new take. She’s focusing her gaze upward to the clouds, loose structures in their own right that lend so much to her ability to abstract.

She said that Juicy was part of her creative journey. It was a moment, she noted, where she clicked into something new and inspiring. Her Elemental Sky series is less structured now and a little more “free flowing,” which affords her the opportunity to show more of the artistry at work.

“For me, I couldn’t show as much of my mark-making ability with that texture because it was simply the texture itself. It was what it was.”

Consider this then the polar opposite of Juicy. The gobs of paint are gone and replaced with a more finessed approach. Perhaps this should have been called ‘Flashy’; it certainly has more pizzazz.

“I’m using just a stronger concentration of paint, so it’s a really, really thin, really, really strong paint. It’s got a lot of pigment in it. It’s super-pigmented paint. I’m not so much in control of all of their textures where the Juicy series I was 100 per cent in control of every step. It’s more freeing that I can let some of that intuitive nature of painting all come together and pull together and mix together on the surfaces itself.”

She added that she’s also having tons of fun with these new processes.

“My basement studio is a disaster! It’s definitely messier but I think it makes them that much deeper just because they’re interesting and a little more haphazard and more fun, just to me they have a little bit more life to them, I think.”