Sam Zwemmer Paintwork - specialising in floral and botanical art

Sam was born in London and grew up in the bohemian post war world of Hampstead where her mother, a dancer, for some years ran the Hampstead Ballet Club in Heath Street.
Sam herself abandoned dance at age seven having decided that art, her father’s profession, was her real inherited talent. Luckily she was indulged in this even to the extent of being allowed to paint murals on several walls at home the vibrancy of which clearly predicted her life long love affair with pure bright colours.

On leaving school, Sam trained and worked briefly in display before developing a talent for painting in her late teens which led her to set up a small shop selling painted furniture in Hampstead Antique Emporium in London. She developed a life long interest in antiques and furniture and continued to paint for the antique trade until the late 1990s.

Largely self taught, she also became adept in Trompe l’Oeil and specialist paint finishes which inevitably led to a dual career as an interior designer, decorator and muralist.

It was however while painting a commissioned, 3 metre long, twelve door cupboard unit with botanical studies copied from the Florilegium of Joseph Banks, that Sam discovered an amazing ability and love of painting flowers.

In response to this she started working on canvas and now concentrates the majority of her work in this area.

While her work does not obviously fall into the category of botanical painting, their presentation and proportion is highly unusual for that genre, she makes every effort to produce to that standard of accuracy.

This is essential to her and she researches her subjects in depth.

Coupled with that essential precept however is her individuality of style which, so valued by commissioning customers in the decorating and antiques world, now results in an unusually light hearted approach to botanical painting while still retaining the necessary attention to detail with both nuance of colour and brushwork that is superb.

Sam and her husband John divide their time between their home in Lincolnshire and their semi-derelict hovel in France.