Organized Chaos: The Art of Sam Gibbons - Hi-Fructose Magazine

"My early work was more narrative than it is now. Not so much that I would have recurring characters but it was cartoony and dealt with personal stories. Since then, that's sort of changed. I didn't want the narrative to take over the work, so I had to think of a way to negate that. Putting the scenes into a symmetrical design sort of negates the narrative, and makes it more about shape and color, or size and form."

"A big reason I started the symmetry thing was because of a painting I did when I was first starting grad school. It was based on a famous work by Jan van Eyck called, "The Ghent Altarpiece." It's a symmetrical piece depicting several different scenes: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the annunciation of Mary... I did a piece based around that about the relationship between male and female, and good versus evil. I started seeing the possibilities of things I could do using symmetry."

"Looking at a typical Sam Gibbons painting, I imagine a multitude of simple forces at odds with one another. Like one side of the face competing with the other, the right hand making a fist at the left, or two lines of identical children engaged in a fierce game of tug-of-war. The equilibrium is stunning."

Sam Gibbons creates visually complex paintings characterized by symmetrical designs featuring competing forces and intricate imagery. His work employs rich color palettes and surreal elements, such as distorted faces, mythological creatures, and symbolic objects arranged in balanced compositions. Early in his career, Gibbons moved away from narrative-driven cartoony work toward a more formalist approach. He adopted symmetry as a compositional strategy to negate narrative dominance and emphasize visual elements instead. This shift was inspired by studying Jan van Eyck's "The Ghent Altarpiece," which explores dualities like male versus female and good versus evil through symmetrical arrangement. The ornate quality of his drawings incorporates iconography and symbolism, creating layered, intricate visual landscapes.

Read at Hi-Fructose Magazine - The New Contemporary Art Magazine