Impromptu: Painting Sam Weeks

Some paintings come carefully planned, others just demand to be made in the moment. This portrait of my friend and fellow artist Sam Weeks was painted live at • nook • gallery on Saturday 24 August 2025. It became part of my Impromptu series, a body of work that began with a portrait of Gosia earlier this summer and has since taken on a life of its own.

What makes this one different is that it isn’t just a portrait of a sitter. It’s a portrait of a friend, someone I know deeply, which gives the work another layer of meaning.

Finding My Tribe

Sam and I first met through United Artists of South Birmingham. From the start, it felt like we’d known each other forever. It’s funny how sometimes people arrive later in your life and fit right in, like they were always supposed to be there. Together we’ve already done a hell of a lot - from running UASB side by side, to organising Arts Fest, to launching Art in the Heath.

Through all of this, I’ve found my tribe. Sam lives just around the corner from me in Kings Heath, and alongside Tiggy and Tara, we’ve built our collective, In Full Flow. We’re all as bonkers and creatively wild as each other, which means whenever we get together the conversations never stop. We can talk about art and practice for hours, diving into the why and how of what we do. It’s hilarious at times, but it’s also deeply nourishing. I feel lucky to have found that.

Ironically, although we work on so many projects together, we rarely get the chance to actually sit down and make art side by side. This painting became one of those rare occasions, and that’s part of what makes it so important to me.

The Process

I started the painting with a mid-tone umber brown ground and mapped the composition in charcoal. To break the surface, I worked with Sennelier oil sticks, loosening myself up before shifting into brushwork and palette knives. The hair carries that knife energy, giving the portrait a sense of abstraction within the figurative.

Colour was always going to be at the heart of this painting. Sam has a real connection with turquoise, and at the moment she even wears it in her hair. I pulled that shade right through the portrait, building it into a harmony of blues - cobalt, cerulean, ultramarine, King’s Blue Light, Prussian, Payne’s Grey, viridian - celebrating both her presence and her energy.

The work remains on its drawing board, unfinished in the traditional sense, edges raw and oils still wet. I wanted to show it in this state because it holds the immediacy of the demo, with all its workings visible.

Seeing Through the Paint

Painting a friend is an entirely different experience to painting someone you don’t know. Sitting for hours, observing them closely, you start to notice quirks and mannerisms that slowly reveal themselves in paint. With Sam, there were moments when certain features seemed to jump out at me - her eyes in particular, which suddenly brought her alive on the canvas.

These moments are hard to explain, but they’re what I find most fascinating about portraiture. It’s not just likeness, it’s the way a personality seeps through in brushstrokes, how the act of looking deeply translates into something recognisable, even intangible.

Between Series

This year my main body of work has been The Space Between Us, an exploration of intimacy and connection. These impromptu portraits weren’t planned as part of that series, but strangely the two have begun to merge. Painting Sam reminded me that connection isn’t just an abstract concept, it’s lived and felt in friendships, in the people who sit for us, in the communities we build together.

In that sense, Impromptu and The Space Between Us have married themselves together, blurring the boundaries between personal practice and personal relationships.

At the time of writing this, Sam hasn’t seen the finished portrait yet - she’s away. That feels daunting! Gulp lol! Portraits are intimate things, and people react to them in all sorts of ways. I always hope the sitter will like what I’ve made, though I know it can be confronting to see yourself painted.

What I do know is that this painting carries the story of our friendship, the spark of connection, and the feeling of finding my people. It is as much about us as it is about her.

Title: Sam 2025
Medium: Oil paint, Sennelier oil sticks, charcoal
Substrate: Fabriano Tela Oil heavyweight paper
Size: 65 x 50 cm
Year: 2025