Artist, Muralist, Curator, Community Leader
Sam Belisle is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Boston, Massachusetts. The Ohio native traveled east to attend graduate school at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA). Since completing his master’s degree in 2018, Belisle has been participating in Boston’s gallery circuit, as well as engaging the community through grass roots art events. He has shown work at Adelson Gallery, Beacon Gallery, founded the Central artist in residence program and worked as a manager on the Webster Court Project. Belisle also received the “Best Emerging Artist” award in 2018 by the Faye Chandler Foundation at Boston City Hall.
In 2020, Belisle and fellow artist Cal Rice opened Nearby Gallery in Newton Centre, MA. Nearby Gallery is a contemporary art gallery and community art space that focuses its efforts on creating opportunities for emerging artists and providing Newton and surrounding communities and accessible space to engage with fine art.
In his own art practice, Belisle combines traditional painting with a parsimonious decision making; often utilizing found objects or recycled surfaces to paint upon. His paintings emphasize banal moments, landscapes, fashion, or objects that he considers relevant identifiers of the working-class experience. His use of found material often reinforces the idea of frugality which is an ever-present element in the narratives he is presenting. By exhibiting these stories in spaces often occupied by educated, affluent communities he hopes to stimulate conversations about social class disparities in America that can hopefully start to bridge an economic and cultural gap that seems to be consistently widening.