Sam Wilkinson is an emerging artist based in Hobart/Nipaluna, Tasmania/Lutruwita. With rich surfaces and a low-key palette, Wilkinson’s paintings capture the density of the remote Tasmanian wilderness, its raw beauty and often unstable conditions. Foremost to Wilkinson’s inspiration is the first-hand experience of journeying off-track through the mountainous areas of south-west Lutruwita / Tasmania, navigating its rough terrain and notorious weather.
Captured through multiple layers of paint, is the weight of the landscape and its thick atmosphere, where dense scrub and rocky peaks appear to slowly recede beneath a blanket of mist. Reflected within this sense of isolation and heavy silence, is Wilkinson’s own experience of exploring the landscape, compelled to respect its sovereignty and being resigned to its unforgiving conditions. Derived from the memory of this experience, each composition shares part of Wilkinson’s expedition and its lasting physical and emotional influence. As such, there is an underlying honesty to how Wilkinson uses paint, capturing more than a filtered likeness, but the landscapes persuasive impact and understanding that only comes from lived experience.
Sitting in contrast to the darker tones of the textured foregrounds are delicately blended tones, where the looming clouds seamlessly transition into the hazy horizon from the fading light. Here, Wilkinson captures the feeling of being truly consumed by the landscape, where your sense of scale and orientation start to wane. This reflects the relentless demands of Wilkinson’s recent expedition, including a planned destination that ultimately remained out of reach. It also echoes the pursuit of painting, Wilkinson recognising the value of perseverance and the countless new challenges that will forever lure artists back.
Overall, Wilkinson’s work reasserts the innate draw of the Tasmanian landscape, being endlessly fascinating and an enduring source of inspiration, on both a creative and personal level. It also provides further evidence of paints capacity to articulate deeper meaning of the landscape beyond mere observation, allowing us to be lost to its significance and humbled by its permeance.
Sam Wilkinson graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art, University of Tasmania in 2009, going on to exhibit in group exhibition nationally. Recent solo exhibitions include at Social Gallery [2025] and Gallerie SeventyOne [2022].
Exhibitions
