Didier Sams “Next Door”

12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas

Didier Sams is a figment of Mary Brooking’s imagination. He’s a small, softspoken man, an immigrant from some wartorn place he never mentions, with deep eyes and raging PTSD that manifests in acute social anxiety - few people ever see Didier, and those who do rarely hear or notice him. He is most content when expressing himself as an abstract painter in Mary’s studio, where he is always welcomed respectfully. There may have been some formal art training in Didier’s background at some point in the past, but he isn’t saying anything about that, preferring to learn and take inspiration from fleeting interactions on the streets of his new home country. His paintings both explore and gently celebrate the ticklishness of his own existence, as well as that of all thought forms, positing transposed glimpses of what could be positive and negative spaces, and empty frameworks punctuated by implied surreal windows into figments of space.