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. She is currently enrolled (2025) 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.
Samantha Mercadante Eckert is a curator and multidisciplinary artist. Her work comes from an intuitive process that involves time, deep observation, contemplation, and experimentation. This latest series of paintings embodies the style of 'Casualism,' which prioritizes the creative process; nothing is preplanned.
(Shown in photo with crocheted textile made by her grandmother, Antonietta Aloi Mercadante)
Artist Statement
On painting: I am exploring experimentation and intuitive and intentional response to color, shape, and movement, as well as spatial landscape within the compositions. My choices in color, mark-making, and pouring are driven by impulse and my reactions to the unfolding activity of liquid paint blooms, drips, and layers. Swaths of color—resembling either looming clouds or gushing waterfalls—are designed to evoke imaginary or dreamlike landscapes. Through rigorous art practice and long looking, over time, my sensibilities become more developed. My wish is for intuition to meld with intention.
The work is informed by my personal feelings of bewilderment and anxiety, heightened by concerns about social media addiction, the rise of artificial intelligence and robotics, and the complexities of politics. The goal is to express a dichotomy: the tension between anxiety and peacefulness encapsulated by the mystery of abstraction. However, ultimately, I’m interested in portraying beauty, memory, loss, and longing in abstract form. I find solace in nature, and am captivated by the beauty of the sea, clouds, and stars.
The new clay works are crafted with care and gentle handling, embodying both feminine sensuality and a connection to nature, particularly sea plants and living organisms.
Furthermore: Since the COVID lockdown, I believe humanity has been straddling a line between reality and something else; the mysteries of time and memory feel tangled and difficult to unravel. I experience a profound sense of longing within myself, and I sense this same longing in others— a yearning for a simpler time before COVID and before technology overshadowed our spirits.
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
