Art of Sam Yeates

                                                                     The Witching Hour  ​

     The angel is a familiar image and figures prominently in our Judeo - Christian traditions. In this series of drawings and paintings, the combination of nude with its erotic possibilities is at odds with our long held view of angels representing purity and spiritual matters. With wings belonging more, perhaps, to a hunting bird, the figure is viewed less in terms of the religious and more in terms of the earthly and mysterious. The figure is not the image of purity, but more the initiator of mysteries.
      I often include the cats in paintings for several reasons. First, is their long association with witchcraft as familiars. Cats, are, by their nature inscrutable and seem to be answerable only to themselves. They choose to be there and witness whatever conspires. Perhaps they represent the side of our nature of which we have little control.
       The headlights in the distance are youth being drawn toward awakening. The winged figure is the witch woman, the earth goddess, or again, the initiator into the mysteries of life, experiences not without their dangers.​

            No Birds Would Sing If Cats Had Wings

This series has allowed me to play with the concept of one of nature's most accomplished hunters made even more so. The series title came to me one day while sketching a cat and adding wings. It dawned on me how nature would have changed if cats had developed flight.

This was sold at the Chalk Farm Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M.