Biography
Samantha M. Eckert was born in Glen Cove, NY, and raised in Brownsville, VT. She lived in New Mexico for many years and returned to Vermont in 2012. Eckert earned her MFA in Visual Art in 2015 from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT; a Certification in Museum Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM; and a bachelor’s degree from Vermont College of Norwich University, Montpelier, VT. She has attended several artist residencies, including Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass, CO; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; La Macina di San Cresci, Greve, Chianti, Italy; and she was a two-time artist in residence at The Studios at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA. In 2025, she was awarded a Vermont Arts Council Grant, received the James Bernard Haggarty Scholarship, and is enrolled in the NYC Crit Club Canopy Program, mentored by Sharon Butler (Two Coats of Paint). Eckert has exhibited in MA, NH, NM, VT, and Italy. She is a Vermont-based emerging artist.
(Shown in photo with crocheted textile made by her grandmother, Antonietta Aloi Mercadante)
Artist Statement
In my mind, the studio becomes a laboratory for exploring the intertwined dimensions of personal reflection, socio-political complexity, and spiritual inquiry. My paintings begin in play, then evolve into compositions shaped by interior questioning. At times, they draw on memories of places, objects, or colors recalled from dreams. Working in abstraction—free from fixed symbolism—allows the work to move beyond representation and lets material, gesture, color, and texture serve as vehicles for contemplation. The canvas becomes a philosophical terrain where wandering—intellectual, civic, and spiritual—unfolds as a fluid, interconnected creative process.
Ultimately, my practice aims to explore the intersection of spiritual yearning and political struggle, where each informs the other. Through my own wanderings, my work positions hope not as naïve optimism but as a sustained, contemplative practice—one that nourishes inner life while supporting collective possibility.
On liquid painting | excerpt from the 2013 essay “Cover the Earth” by Stephen Maine, written for the exhibition, “POUR,” at the Schmidt Gallery, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida. An exhibition that examined the use of poured paint in contemporary art practice. “In the context of the contemporary metropolis, the idea of fluidity connotes mobility of all kinds, social agility, flexibility, adaptability: flow. It suggests familiarity with a diverse milieu and skill in navigating it. It is analogous to the peak experience for an artist in the studio or at the keyboard or in the concert hall, the very opposite of being stuck. Fluidity implies mastery, of which a significant aspect is knowing when and how to loosen one’s grasp of technique and permit the situation to shape itself. The ebb and flow of liquid pigment embodies, in material, plastic form, those preternaturally fruitful moments of creative endeavor when an exhilarating sense of freedom convinces us that anything is possible.” –Stephen Maine