Sam Chivers: Truth/Mystery

Truth/Mystery, by Sam Chivers.
15% of the sale of this print goes to the Shama Foundation.

Sam Chivers started illustrating professionally about ten years ago. In 2004, he started making screen prints. Sam likes the printmaking process, because the repetitive action of it all makes you feel like your own robot, yet each one turns out differently, so you’re forced to accept a certain level of serendipity.

In recent years, Sam’s work has become less figurative in favour of abstract forms, but it’s still bound by certain compositional rules – which he says in time, may have to go.



About the print:
This print is the first time I’ve done something with type that hasn’t been a poster. The relationship between the two words ‘Truth’ and ‘Mystery’ has appealed to me for a while – it’s not as straightforward as one would think, and always leads down a pathway to those bigger, more fundamental questions. So, in that sense this print has a spiritual angle. It’s intended as a meditative piece; I’m not trying to answer anything here, it’s more about finding questions.

This is a two-color screenprint on 220gsm Fabriano Rosapina paper, embellished with gold leaf. Each was signed and numbered by the artist.

PURCHASE $70!

What is your process?
I doodle on discarded envelopes at work when I’m bored. When I’m not consciously thinking about what I’m doing, I generally get better results. Illustrating can be a very prescriptive process, so for me it’s important to make first and ask questions later, whenever possible.

What has inspired you recently?
Science. The Hadron Collider, Freeman Dyson’s Dyson trees, the Herschel Telescope, and HM Cancri – a star system consisting of two stars that orbit each other every five minutes at over a million miles an hour. We live in golden age of available information.

Why did you choose to pair the Shama Foundation with your print?
Madagascar is mostly known for its weird and freaky wildlife, but the rapid erosion of the environment there necessitates the need for education more now than it ever has.



How have you seen art transform the world around you?
That’s a general question – to answer it properly would require an essay. I’ll answer it as literally as I can. I went to an interactive play recently that was staged in an abandoned department store in my local neighborhood. It was loosely based on Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’. The whole building that had been familiar to me as a shop three years earlier was transformed into something else entirely. The play itself was as much about the building and its secret history and eventual demise as the characters the play portrayed.

If you could pick one artist to mentor you, who would it be?
Alejandro Jodorowsky. He knows the archetypes, he knows how to fail, and he is wise.

Who are some artists you think people should know about?
Brian Eno - not his music but his installations. Victor Timofeev, Mark Jenkins, The P!nch.