Sam MacInnes

“Macinnes explores young men’s defences – their branded clothes, their social groups, their vices – but their vulnerabilities still glow through. Much like Basquiat before him (and in a similar street-art inspired, oftentimes harsh style) the artist captures poetically the experiences of youth in the city.” -Verity Babbs, The Rafiki Gallery, 2020.

If you are interest in Sam’s work please email all enquiries to sammacinnes@outlook.com

www.thedudezone.co.uk

About

My body of work entitled “The-Dude-Zone” uses specific animal motifs, combined with satire and fantastical elements, to highlight the underlying problems within toxically masculine young male culture.

These animals are found in crude urban settings, reflecting my own life in the city of Glasgow. I focus on the underlying issues with the city’s deep-rooted drinking and drug culture, a culture which a lot of young men find hard to escape. These anthropomorphic characters are completed with a cartoonish, loose and rough style, mixing spray paint, oil bars and graphite, bright colours and spontaneous mark-making, on large scale.

Taking a great deal of inspiration from comics like Matt Furie’s “Boys Club” and Ralph Bakshi’s cartoons, I aim to envisage the city through my own animal characters. Translating the bleakness of reality through the brightness and boldness of childlike cartoons. With these characters finding themselves getting up to no good in bars and night-clubs across the city.

To me, the realism in the work is ever apparent. The work directly reflects my life and the people I surround myself with; something that makes these works ever more relatable. It is a world dictated by dudes whose only concern is when they can be with their tribe again, but that could change in an instant and is what particularly excites me about the work. The characters whose acquaintance I have made are often colourful, bad-boy characters who have flourished in the rave environment, but as my life transpires and takes on new shape so will theirs.

Biography

Sam MacInnes (b.1997) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2020 with a Masters in Fine Art. Sam is a Scottish contemporary artist who deals with the lived environment he finds himself in. By adapting his experiences and inspirations, Sam creates for himself a world which he then translates onto paper and canvas. Breathing life into his merry cast of characters, Sam creates an imagined world of boys behaving badly, debauchery and at times an honest vulnerability that is rarely seen in young men.