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Sam Ainsley is an artist and teacher. She has forged a career within the visual arts sector nationally and internationally. From 1985-1991 she taught on the Environmental Art programme under David Harding’s leadership when she co-founded the Master of Fine Art course and was the programme Director from its inception until 2006. 

Artist statement

I think of my work as a form of “emotional mapping” that tries to uncover correspondences and relationships between natural, (biological, geographic, geological) phenomena, the human body and the human condition. Seeing the “this-ness” in “that” and vice versa allows me to formulate metaphors where the viewer might question precisely what it is they are seeing. I am interested in both the correspondences and disjunctions between the natural and man-made world. I am also fascinated by the relationship between visual images of the “micro” and the “macro’ and how I might draw parallels between our ability as human beings to focus closely on the microscopic world (internal) and to stand back and view the macroscopic world, (external) ‘the bigger picture”. It is by this constant oscillation of viewpoint that my world view has been developed and my position as an artist articulated. In recent years I have become fascinated by the Idea of North and “Northern-ness” (in relation to identity) and our island archipelago. Of specific influence has been a book by Scottish geographer, Peter Davidson entitled The Idea of North. Hans Ulrich Obrist in the documentary “Scotland’s Art Revolution” said “Scotland is an archipelago and maybe archipelagos are going to be more important in the future as they are usually further from the traditional centres”. Being on the periphery is perhaps no bad thing either in art or in life.

I have been influenced by many other artists, feminism, film, international politics and literature/poetry. I am also interested in how we might bridge the gap between women’s experience of the world and men’s experience which continues to fascinate me after the knowledge of two millennia (or more) of human interaction.