About the artist
Early life and Education
Sam Montgomery (1993 - present) is an American oil painter with a surrealistic lens on the natural world and the human form. Raised in the rainy forests of Washington state, he found solitude and strength in the natural world.
Once graduating from high school, Montgomery spent several months exploring the Andes mountains in South America. His travels took him through Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina before returning to the United States where he settling in the desert southwest. In 2018 he graduated from New Mexico Tech with a bachelor’s degree in physics, where he focused in astronomy with minors in Earth science and mathematics. A vast array of scientific projects occupied his young adulthood, most notably regarding asteroid observations, where his work was published through journals at NASA.
He eventually worked as a laboratory manager for the Duke University Department of neurobiology, where he assisted in the mapping of neurological pathways in mice to better understand the link between recognition and memory. Montgomery left his career in the sciences in early 2020.
The Artist Today
Currently working as a baker, Montgomery lives with his boyfriend and their pet corgi in Denver, Colorado.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, he has brought his laboratory expertise to the kitchen. Working full-time as a baker, he has spent years honing his artisan breads and pastries.
Within recent years, the identity of an artist has begun to emerge. With no formal training, Montgomery slowly developed his own artistic signature, taking inspiration from painters such as Childe Hassam, Georgia O’Keefe, Tom of Finland, and Navitrolla.
He mainly seeks inspiration from his surroundings. Natural landscapes and aesthetic cityscapes have been featured heavily in several pieces. Highlighting scenes from his Colorado home as well as from his extensive travels. Many of the pieces are displayed in his “Places that Inspire” series, where he celebrates different places that have captured his artistic spirit.
Montgomery’s experiences as a competitive freestyle and folkstyle wrestler have also shown up in his work. Most notable is his 10-piece collection titled “Boys of the Alpha League” where he paints varied wrestling sequences as viewed through the lens of a queer man. He has clear intensions of investigating the male form further, as well as delving deeper into the world of kink art.
This artist believes that no human is illegal, black lives matter, trans lives matter, free Palestine, and free Ukraine.