Samantha Dorian was raised between three islands: Manhattan, Long Island, and an island in Vogler’s Cove, Nova Scotia; between Lincoln Center, Jones Beach, and a hippie outpost with no plumbing or electricity.
As a freshman at Purchase College she studied piano performance, but soon discovered Vito Acconci at the Neuberger Museum and all bets were off. Art has always been her inner central focus, and her way of making sense of the world, language was her obsessive medium to get her through to the visual aspects.
Samantha has toured the American East Coast on a Harley, lived in a Greek Orthodox monastery, and been practicing Sivananda Vedanta yoga and meditation for more than 25 years.
The root of her abstractions in her work comes from her love of philosophy and the notions of objectivity versus subjectivity that weave throughout different strains of thought. Her work also often draws on the desire to uncover any residue of dogmatic oppression of the female body vis-à- vis writers and thinkers such as Catherine Clément, Julia Kristeva, Louise Bourgeois, Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Kant, and Kiki Smith – to mention only a few. Notions and representations of syncope, discipline, obedience, and a calmness in the face of danger have all been common threads throughout her work.
She was a student of the late Larry Fane, as well as Brenda Garand and Tom Doyle