Preston Sampson Opening Reception

SON OF HARLEM – PRESTON SAMPSON RETURNS TO PRESENT
NEW DIRECTIONS SPRING 2013 EXHIBITION AT THE SOL STUDIO

On April 25, 2013 The Sol Studio hosted the opening reception for Preston Sampson’s New Directions Spring 2013 Exhibition. The Sol Studio is a strong addition to the Harlem art scene recognizing the deep cultural legacy of the community. It is committed to driving a burgeoning gallery presence on lower Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard joining several other established and emerging galleries. Exhibit curator and former gallerist, Camille Love of Atlanta, Georgia says “The work of Preston Sampson is especially suited to the emerging space, The Sol Studio. It’s vibrant! Its contemporary! Its special!”

Preston Sampson, who spent much of his childhood in Harlem, has a Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland and has been published by The Smithsonian Institute, Town and Country, Playbill, American Visions, and Black Enterprise magazines. He has been critically recognized in the Washington Post for his first retrospective at the University of Maryland in 1997, and also in the 2011 review featuring his Common Threads Exhibit and the Working Man Series.

He combines the skillful use of acrylic paints and vigorous broad brush strokes to create a canvas pulsating with rhythm and movement. A jazz enthusiast, Sampson’s most exuberant paintings are the expansion of melodic ideas. He sees his figurative portrayals as attempts “to emote, to touch, to move you to the center of it all, to enable you to feel certain changes, like fleeting moments of memory.”