Samuel Kirk was born in Somerset in 1988 and studied at the University of Edinburgh before moving to London in 2011. He has since taught art and painted across the country, Europe and the United States and his works are held in public and private collections around the world.
Kirk is a figurative artist interested in how the impression of a place lives in the mind. Painting from memory, his subjects are often warped and distorted due to the imperfection of recall and the addition of thoughts and feelings. He says of his work 'As the Gothic painters relied primarily on memory, rather than painting from life, so they illustrated their thoughts and knowledge of a place, rather than creating exact reproductions. What they produced was a mindscape of where they lived and the ideas and beliefs that infused their lives. By not directly painting from life, but relying on my thoughts and ideas about the world, I am trying to do the same.'