My name is Sam Ticknor, I am a visual artist based in New York City. I work across drawing, painting, printmaking, and writing. My artwork is preoccupied with literature and language. I am drawn to big ideas that resist simple description. I seek out symbolism and storytelling in novels, poetry, philosophy, plays, and religious texts. Finding myself at the edge of language's capacity, I am led to image-making. I work exclusively on paper, influenced by my affinity for books, and I use water-based paints and inks. My fluid materials mirror the slippage between ideas and the invented language we use to hold them. I take texts (my own writing and others’) and, working with my imagination, invent imagery from them in my mind's eye. I draw out the conjured images in singular, sequential, or multi-paneled compositions. I incorporate figures, animals, plant life, captions, dialog, descriptions, external and interior places. My text and images can collaborate or work against each other to produce humor, tension, and unexpected meaning. The zig zag between reading and looking pushes the brain toward revelatory connections. I studied Fine Art and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (BFA ’15) and Studio Art at New York University (MFA ’23). I teach pre-college drawing and painting at New York University and children’s summer workshops at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. I was previously an adjunct professor at Seton Hill University where I taught drawing, painting, and comics courses.