About

A woman with long brown hair and blue eyes standing in an art gallery, looking at the camera, with artwork displayed on the wall behind her.

Samantha Wilson (b. 1990) works across figurative drawing and painting, with a practice deeply rooted in the exploration of archival imagery. Her work is informed by a self-curated collection of photographs spanning over 60 categories, encompassing found, institutional, and personal imagery. In this evolving archive, Wilson is drawn to the potential of images not as stable records but as sites of ambiguity, memory, and emotional residue. Her paintings reimagine the body, embracing its instability and inviting the viewer into a dialogue between the figure and its fragmented representations.

At the core of her practice lies a commitment to ethical inquiry. Wilson uses ambiguity as both a formal and conceptual tool—creating works that straddle the line between abstraction and figuration. Through the use of liquid watercolour, powder pigments, charcoal, and oil paint, her figures appear simultaneously revealed and concealed, unsettling fixed identities and questioning the certainty of visual representation. In doing so, her work interrogates the roles of both artist and viewer, challenging us to reflect on the ethics of witnessing and the responsibility we bear in interpreting images—especially those that capture bodies in moments of vulnerability, trauma, and uncertainty.

Wilson’s exploration of archival images is not about fixing or clarifying; rather, it is a search for spaces of unresolved meaning, where the body can be reimagined and reformed. By emphasizing the tension between visibility and invisibility, her paintings invite empathy through their visual ambiguity, encouraging compassionate engagement with figures that transcend the limits of race, gender, age, and political status. Wilson’s work seeks to establish a mode of seeing that resists commodification, instead offering a slower, more contemplative relationship with the archive.

Wilson holds a BA and MFA in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (2010–2015) and an MRes in Art and Humanities from The Royal College of Art (2023). She has received several prestigious awards, including the John Kinross Scholarship to Florence, the RSA New Contemporaries Award (2015), and a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST) grant (2022). Recent exhibitions include her solo show Rest in Limbo at the Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2024), and group shows Earthwise at Beaconsfield Contemporary and Inner Workings at Cooke Latham Gallery, London (2023). She lives and works in Oxford.

EDUCATION

The Royal College of Art, London, UK

MRes Art & Humanities | Sep 2022 - Sep 2023

Painting as an Empathetic Practice - view Research profile here

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, UK

Masters of Fine Art with Distinction | Sep 2014 - Nov 2015

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, UK

Bachelors of Fine Art with First Class Honours | Sep 2010 - Jun 2014

OCAD University, Toronto, CA

Transatlantic Exchange in Drawing and Painting | Aug 2012 - Dec 2012

Dundee College

HNC in Contemporary Art Practices | Sep 2008-June 2010