Sam Cockrell
July 29, 2025

Painter Sam Cockrell (b. 1989, Colonial Williamsburg) joins the Selection Committee Radio Show with a sweet, Slowcore mixtape of songs he listens to in the studio.

While in grad school at Columbia University in 2014, Sam Cockrell took a trip to the Bronx Zoo. He was in the Reptile House looking at snakes and it occurred to him that this—an encounter between himself and an animal—was the subject of his work. That realization grew into a practice of painting an animal (almost) every day on a standardized 8" x 10" canvas. Every picture uses a photograph taken by Cockrell as a reference; each image is a record of a real animal or insect seen and captured by him on a daily walk.

These pictures, made exclusively using an airbrush, are soft-focused and tender, and surprisingly varied in subject matter, scale, and feeling. Cockrell discusses how he came to use the airbrush as his primary painting tool and the mechanics of his process. We also get into his unique archiving system, the relationship between his work and time, and the benefits of spending a part of one’s day in whatever kind of nature is available.

We talk practice, pixels, paint, and emotional hardcore music! Sam Cockrell’s exhibition All Creatures Great and Small is on view at Blade Study in New York from July 10 through August 10, 2025.

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

1. Drowned World / Substitute for Love, Madonna, 1998
   
2. Autumn Sweater, Yo La Tengo, 1997
   
3. Title and Registration, Death Cab for Cutie, 2003
   
4. Look At Miss Ohio, Gillian Welch, 2003
   
5. Drunk w/ the Only Saints I Know, Carissa's Wierd, c. 1996-1999
   
6. Little Star, Stina Nordenstam, 1994
   
7. Little League, Cap'n Jazz, 1998
   
8. Gentle Moon, Sun Kil Moon, 2003
   
9. Soco Amaretto Lime, Brand New, 2001
   
10. Don't Tell Me Where You're Going, Frog, 2018
11. Lakes Of Canada; Karen Peris, Don Peris, The Innocence Mission; 1999
12. Shoe-In, Ida, 1997
    
13. It's O.K., Dead Moon, 1994
    
14. When I Was Drinking, Hem, 2001
15. Whip-poor-will, Magnolia Electric Co. & Jason Molina, 2009
16. Some Sinatra, Secret Stars, 1998
17. Just Like Christmas, Low, 1999
18. Randy Quaid, Desertshore, 2011
19. I Love You Always Forever, Donna Lewis, 1996

Sam Cockrell (b. 1989, Colonial Williamsburg) received his BFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and his MFA from Columbia University in New York. His work was the subject of a solo exhibition at International Waters, New York, in 2023. Group exhibitions in New York include Mery Gates, Mrs. Gallery, Subtitled, International Objects, Below Grand, and Unclebrother, among others, as well as at Fjord, Philadelphia, PA, and Foyer-LA in Los Angeles, CA. His work has been written about in Two Coats of Paint, White Hot Magazine, Artnet News, and Hyperallergic. Residencies include Carrizozo AIR, Carrizozo, New Mexico, and Catwalk Institute in Catskill, NY. Cockrell was nominated for the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in 2022. He currently lives and works in Queens, NY.