Billis/Williams Gallery is pleased to present SAMANTHA FIELDS: Lay of the Land – the gallery’s first solo exhibition of the Los Angeles-based painter’s work. The exhibition features Field’s paintings in atomized acrylic on canvas or paper ranging in scale from the intimate 5×7 inches to the monumental 60×70 inches. The exhibition opens with a reception from 3-6pm on September 12th and continues through October 10th.
Samantha Fields’ work is about potentially cataclysmic moments at the intersection of political, personal, environmental, and societal structures. In this new series, Lay of the Land, Fields is addressing the powerful impact climate change is having on our lives through shifting weather patterns. Fields watched with horror from her front door as the Los Angeles fires of 2025 tore through nearby neighborhoods – the catastrophic effect of changing rain patterns and increasing temperatures coupled with inadequate policy and response from local governing bodies. Fields is processing by unpacking, exploring, and spending time capturing these moments in all their power on her canvases.
Fields’ paintings are rendered using a very fine airbrush to apply hundreds of misted paint layers. The resulting surfaces are luminous and velvety. The depth Fields achieves in her powerful skies using this technique is punctuated by precise detail work along the low horizons. The human interventions in the landscape are depicted using tiny stencils or small amounts of brushwork. There is an elegance and a calm to the surface that belies the chaotic nature of the subject matter.
Fields was the recipient of two residencies during the time she was working on this series: one in the Hudson River Valley and the other in New Mexico. Both location are deeply connected to the history of American painting: the landscape painters of the 19th century Hudson River School and 20th century pioneering modernists Georgia O’Keeffe and Agnes Martin in New Mexico. The thread that connects all of these painters is a profound connection to the landscape and its power. For Fields, the time spent in these spaces inspired and evolved the work. Fields is viewing these catastrophic moments through the lens of wonder and a deep understanding that we will never control the elemental power of nature. These landscapes, like memory, are fragile and easily destroyed. The impermanence of all things is apparent.
The use of airbrush effectively removes recognizable brush strokes of the artist’s hand and gives the paintings a sense of existing outside of traditional painting. The viewer knows they are not photographs but there is an unknowable quality to the work. This experience of the incomprehensible pops us out of our complacent art viewing and gives us pause. The mind and eye wonder and wander – exploring the surface for clues – and in that moment we are connected to the power of art and of nature and what can only be described as the experience of the sublime.
Samantha Fields (b. 1972, Cleveland, OH) received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and has received numerous awards and recognition, including a prestigious City of Los Angeles (COLA) Individual Artist Grant. She has an extensive exhibition history, including shows at rdfa Los Angeles, The California Museum of Photography at UCRartsblock, The University Art Museum in Long Beach, and more. Her work has been collected by and exhibited at noted public institutions such as the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA. Her work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Riot Material, Art & Cake, The LA Weekly, ZYZZYVA, Artweek, Art in America, Art ltd., Artillery, The Detroit News, The Detroit Free Press and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She is a Professor of Art at California State University, Northridge and lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
