A selection of paintings by Pennsylvania-based artist Samantha Joy Groff. Groff received her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2022 and earned a dual undergraduate degree from Parsons School of Design in integrated fashion design and film studies. Raised in a small Mennonite community in rural Pennsylvania, Groff’s work often features animals, plants, and female subjects entangled in a knot of competing desires. Pitting the conservative values of the Pennsylvania Dutch against contemporary ideals of wealth and sexuality, Groff indulges in extreme emotional affect and sensual body/land entanglements through the female experience:

“The figure is bent in unnatural ways to fit the picture plane’s impossibly tight composition as the pressure of hard living keeps the bodies confined. Drawing on medieval animal studies research, Groff paints the animal subjects oscillating between bad taxidermy, animal symbol, and realistic rendering. The animal subjects’ changing forms evoke the human feeling of a fractured psyche that comes with the relationship of living with and processing animals in agriculture.”

Check out more of Groff’s work below!