Vol 2. (June 2025—)
Vol 1. (May 2024—March 2025)
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©2026 Gideon’s Bakery
Samuel Windett
March 10, 2026
Volume 2
Issue 20
Gideon’s Bakery: What do you like about painting?
Samuel Windett: I tend to think more often about the things I don't like. I can find painting very frustrating because a lot of the time it doesn’t really do the things you want it to do. I’m always looking for ways to trick a painting into existence, letting the universe have a go. I like looking at other people’s paintings a lot though.
However, when it's going well I love it. I enjoy bringing something into existence out of nothing, something mysterious that I have probably wanted to be in the world for a long time. It's very rewarding to make an object that accrues a kind of power and significance simply through the combination of a set of different materials. It's like a puzzle. a painting can be put together in a way that either has integrity and magic or in a way that just feels phony or like a dud. We all have the same pieces of the puzzle and it just depends on how you put them together.
GB: What tells you that a painting has crossed from effort and frustration into integrity and magic—and does that recognition come suddenly or accumulate over time?
SW: I’m not sure they follow any rules really. But on the whole, the recognition of something special or at least interesting forms over time. I suppose that painting is an emergent technology, with all the little component parts only gaining significance when they interact as a whole. It always amazes me how so often the emergent properties don't actually ever emerge! The bits don't fit together in any meaningful way.
Often, the thing that tells me that the work has crossed that line into an object that is greater than the sum of its parts, is something physical. Something that affects the nervous system. Something that is not intellectual.
GB: When a painting crosses that threshold, is your job to preserve that state, or to push it further and risk collapse? What tells you it’s finished?
SW: I am sure that lots of painters feel this, but I am always tempted to push things further into that state of near (or total) collapse. It's a desire that needles away at you and doesn't stop until you have resolved or destroyed the work. I always trust that internal voice that pushes and pushes because it just disappears when things fall into place. I always think about the Martingale betting system that people apply to roulette or chance games. You basically double your stakes on every turn and keep playing until you win, and I think in a way the same can apply to painting. You can keep adding material or making decisions about a work until it eventually makes sense and it will gain a certain significance through the belief in that system. And in a funny way, each work has a separate and unique internal logic and they are born from allowing that logic to evolve in a very chaotic and unpredictable manner. The rules that apply to one painting are completely different to the next and so on.
I'm not sure who said this, but I was reading an interview with a famous painter and they said that they recognise the moment that a painting is finished as when they no longer want to get up and touch it or be near it. I think it's a pretty good way to tell and again, it's a physical reaction to the way an object interacts with the world. It's like a bodily intuition.
Sam Windett (b. 1977, Kent, UK) lives and works in Kent. Recent solo exhibitions Include; 2024 HORSES, The Approach, London, UK; MMXX, The Approach, London, UK (Online) (2020); REMODEL, The Approach, London, UK (2019); Condo NYC, Marinaro, New York, USA (2018); Motorway IV, The Approach, London, UK (2017); Sam Windett, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, USA (2015); THIS PANEL IS THAT PAINTING, The Approach, London, UK (2014); Billion Watt Bulb, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, USA (2010); Zephyr, Sies + Höke Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany (2010). Group exhibitions include; The Reason for Painting, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK (2023), Rose des Vents, Park, Tilburg, Netherlands, Aftermath, Setareh Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany (2019); Several Options, Horse and Pony, Berlin, Germany; 20 Years, The Approach, London, UK (2017); Imagine, Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy (2016); Background/ Foreground, Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); Modest Villa Immense Versailles, Kinman, London, UK (2016); The Grantchester Pottery paints the stage, Jerwood Space, London, UK (2015); Inside Arrangement, Mary Mary, Glasgow, UK (2014); Intersection- Contemporary Abstraction And Figuration, The Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA, USA (2013).
Oil and acrylic on cotton duck and calico
182 x 172 cm 71 5/8 x 67 3/4 in.
Oil and acrylic on linen and calico with painted wooden frame
124 x 62 cm 48 13/16 x 24 7/16 in.
Oil, acrylic and collaged paper on linen
109 x 195 cm 42 7/8 x 76 3/4 in.