“ I like to be guided by chance.”
Sam Drukker (Goes 1957) studied at the art academy Minerva in Groningen and at the teacher training college Ubbo Emmius. In addition to his work as an autonomous artist, Sam has been supervising graduate students at the Wackers Academy in Amsterdam since 1990 and regularly gives master classes and lectures. Sam Drukker exhibits in galleries and museums in the Netherlands and abroad such as the Drents Museum in Assen, museum Flehite in Amersfoort, the MEAM in Spain, museum BAC in Switzerland, Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam and in 2014 at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam with his Minje project.
Sam Drukker, artist of the year in 2011, is a gifted portraitist and autonomous artist. The expressive work of Sam Drukker is characterized by a smooth handwriting, a theatrical light/dark contrast and intense use of color. Almost every work of Sam Drukker shows the human figure and it expresses the intensity with which he wanted to capture their character, a gesture, an emotion and an interaction. He concentrates on the figure in such a way that the rest of the canvas often remains empty. Beauty and decay play an equal role in his work to create a captivating unity. Sometimes theatrical and at the same time romantic. In every brushstroke of the canvas Sam Drukker wants to lay down life: the budding, or stagnant life, the ecstatic or empty life. Drukker uses old used materials such as wooden panels found on the street or old tent canvas, surfaces that already have a story of it’s own. The artist explains: [I paint on] "surfaces that already have a life behind them, where the traces are visible. That life, those traces, that story, I respect them and add my part to it". Drukker is a contemporary romantic and knows how to be compelling and moving through his psychological quest.
Sam Drukker often works in series, such as the series of paintings Boxers, Carriers and Ophelia. In his series of paintings called Minje, Sam gave face to an almost disappeared generation: ten Jewish men who lived through the war as adults. The project is a tribute to the Jewish tradition and to survival.
Sam Drukkers paintings are included in corporate- and private collections and museums.