Born and raised in New England, Sam Woolcott headed west around 1970. In Montana she spent several years working on ranches and guiding fly-fishing trips. She then went on to study architecture and later lived on a small sailboat in the Greek Islands.
On that boat in Greece she embarked on her exploration of drawing and painting. She spent the next five years exploring elements of space, structure, and light around the Aegean. Seeking the edge between abstraction and form, her work is informed by Rembrandt, Goya, Giacometti, Bacon, Diebenkorn and Keifer.
Sam, with her husband and gallery co-owner, Poe Dismuke, now resides in the historic southeastern Arizona mining town of Bisbee. Her work here addresses the precarious nature of local places and the hardscrabble lives of those who came before. Capturing both what has endured and what will be lost to time she works in many media, always seeking new approaches to her subjects.
Sam has won many national awards including Sausalito Art Festival’s First Place in Painting as well as three awards in Drawing. Most recently, she was honored with a blue ribbon in Painting from the Scottsdale Art Festival where she has also won First Place awards in Mixed Media, and Drawing & Pastel. Locally, Sam won Best in Show at the Bisbee Plein Air Competition (2004 and 2007), along with the Bisbee Artist Award.
She continues to travel and paint in Greece, Morocco, Russia, Ireland, and nearby Mexico.
