Sam Douglas spent ten months as artist in residence at Highgreen, as part of the ENTWINED: Rural. Land. Lives. Art. programme. During his residency, Sam immersed himself in the surrounding Northumberland landscape, exploring its moorlands, archaeology, and industrial remnants, often travelling on foot or by bicycle to experience the terrain directly. Although his planned Open Studio event was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, his work from the residency is documented in an illustrated booklet featuring an essay by Alexander Marr, and in a short video tour of his studio at the end of the residency.
Sam’s practice is rooted in an intense engagement with the landscape and its layered histories. Drawing inspiration from classical landscape painting, he employs experimental processes to alter and reimagine familiar motifs. Surfaces are repeatedly sanded, scratched, and built up with poured varnish and paint, creating textures that evoke geological and archaeological activity—suggesting erosion, sedimentation, and the uncovering of buried forms. Within these richly worked surfaces, ambiguous structures emerge: fragments of architecture, rock formations, or traces of human industry. The result is a landscape transformed by time and imagination, charged with visionary light and atmosphere.
During his time at Highgreen, Sam developed paintings from drawings and photographs made across Northumberland and the Borders, focusing on ancient and man-made features such as standing stones, cup-and-ring marks, and mining remains. He describes the rural environment as a constant source of inspiration: its low-intensity farming, sparse population, and vast skies offering both contrast and renewal after years living in the South East. Encounters with local residents and farmers provided valuable insights into the land’s layered history, deepening his connection to place.
Community engagement formed an important part of the residency. Sam led a landscape drawing workshop for the Otterburn Youth Group, hosted painting sessions for local residents in Tarset and Falstone, and collaborated with Bellingham Middle School, where he guided pupils in large-scale landscape drawings and Arts Award projects. He also supported Newcastle University Fine Art students during a mini-placement at Highgreen, sharing his approach to working within and from the landscape.
Sam Douglas’s residency at Highgreen stands as a vivid exploration of rural environment, memory, and creative process—where painting becomes both an act of excavation and a meditation on the enduring relationship between people and place.
