Energy and charm: Meet Samara Couri

Susan Tebbutt interviews Samara Couri as part of DPG Friends’ Celebration of South London Women Artists.
Samara Couri bubbles with energy and charm. Born in Bulgaria, she has lived in London since she was 5. Tom Davies, her secondary school art teacher, was ‘one of the biggest inspirations for me and many other students’ and meant that she had the exceptional experience of doing life drawing twice a week at school. ‘It’s very important to be able to have life models and paint or draw them and express yourself through it. To really look and see what is there.’

Samara loves life-drawing and feels better able to understand it now she herself is a life model

- she features on the front page of American artist Cynthia Westwood’s catalogue of paintings of women in bathrooms.

For her Fine Art Foundation course at Byam Shaw at Central St Martins Samara’s final project was a fairly abstract 7 x 4 metres oil on canvas entitled ‘Anatomy’. Whereas her colours and brush-strokes were then more spontaneous and not lifelike, she now sees things differently: ‘I am clearer now about what I want to see’.

Now nearing the end of her first year of a BA in Fine Art Painting at City and Guilds of London Art School she is very enthusiastic about her experience: ‘We’re like a family there. I never felt like that anywhere else. It’s an intimate place and everybody helps each other out. We have life models and the tutors encourage us a lot. They explain things and tell you how you can improve. It’s constructive – makes you want to go on.’

For her first year show she has experimented with oil painting on mirrors. ‘I really wanted to see how it would feel – the materiality of it. The painting in oil against the smooth surfaces. I love new challenges. The body is always a challenge – so many things to look at. For me it’s a very personal experience. I’m never satisfied. Which I think is a good thing, because you always want to get better and better.’

What about the subject matter?

‘I wanted to portray people trapped in things in their own world.

It’s a mirror. It’s a reflection of your world. All the works have a border, so you’re in your own world, but you’re trapped and can’t get out.’

Samara is most interested in creating a sense of character.

‘Mark-making is very important. There’s this energy that bounces off you when you’re painting, and it creates its own energy. Like a nervous energy that creates this form. It’s something like a spiritual experience, as if there’s a life-force in front of you, and you’re trying to portray it in your own way.
A very beautiful, sensual thing to do.’

[Image: 'In a Safe Place' 20" x 16" oil on canvas 2008 Find more of Samara's work here>]