FREDERICTON, NB.- The Beaverbrook Art Gallery announced that the esteemed Theodore Prize has been awarded to Megan Samms, an L’nu and Nlaka’pamux multidisciplinary artist from Newfoundland and Labrador. This prestigious award recognizes exceptional achievement in the visual arts and celebrates artists who have made significant contributions to the Canadian art landscape.
Samms, who works in diverse mediums including textile, natural dyes and inks, paint, words, motif and mark making, mapping, photography, and performance, explores themes of generative anticoloniality and multiplicity, contrastingly at fragmentation while carefully weaving together place and meaning.
Their work results in layered materials, functional objects from the hand, words from the heart, and personal narrative based on living and responding with place-in-the-world and kin.
“Megan Samms' collaborative and supportive approach, rooted in the notion of place, embodies an important ethos of the Atlantic Region. Whether hosting a residency program on their ancestral lands in rural Ktaqmkuk (the island of Newfoundland) or in their own practice, Samms views art as the focal point for relationships -- with the land, with other artists, and with those who engage with their art. She shows us that art is a living focal point, thriving when culture is fostered and supported. In this way, they also reflect larger trends in the Atlantic and national landscape, where Indigenous ways of knowing and sharing are reframing how we make, how we collect, and how we share.” says Ray Cronin on behalf of the selection committee for the Theodore Prize.
“As an artist, I often have my head down and my heart out while I’m working, making artworks, tending to process, or teaching. It’s a big honour to be recognized, seen, and nominated for prizes like the Theodore, but I don’t expect to be. To be nominated is a compliment enough but to receive the news that I was selected for the Theodore prize this year is a huge privilege; I’m very proud to receive this prize and it’s an honest and gratifying responsibility to keep doing and making, one that I take very seriously.” Says Megan Samms, this year’s Theodore Prize winner. “I hold my hands up and say wela’lin aqq kʷukʷscemxʷ to my nominators, the jury for the Theodore prize, to the Throop Family Foundation, to my collaborators, friends, and family who hold me close and up.”
The Theodore Prize is a family-funded initiative led by the Throop Family Foundation to celebrate the professional accomplishments of an Atlantic Canadian visual artist. Stemming from a desire to give something back to the Atlantic Canadian Visual Arts Community, the prize is named for a special family member who exemplified generosity and good will. Administered by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, The Theodore Prize is an annual award of $20,000 given to an Atlantic Canadian artist whose work displays a high level of artistic and creative excellence, a command of the artist’s medium, and an acknowledged level of regard from the Atlantic Canadian curatorial/gallery community.
