The painting Between Man and God (2023) marks a profound moment within Samaj’s long-standing DROP LINE series, a body of work initiated in 1996 as the culmination of decades of artistic inquiry. Prior to this series, Samaj’s work was marked by vigorous explorations in oil on paper, emphasizing action-based methods and spontaneous gestures. The DROP LINE series synthesizes this experience into a refined methodology, where favored production techniques meet an ideology steeped in duality and symbiosis.
This particular piece, created in oil on cotton rag paper and measuring 30.5 by 23 inches, stands as both relic and revelation. It is a dialogue—urgent, possibly anguished—between a human presence and an unseen creative force. In his words, it is “an intense conversation with an entity, with possible angst, an entity that seems to embody the power of creation.”
Narratives Emerge: During and After the Act
As with much of Samaj’s work, meaning is not preordained but arrives organically, through process. The act of painting is a form of communion—a negotiation of spiritual, emotional, and formal elements. The resulting composition is less a depiction than a transmission. It carries with it the residue of energy, struggle, harmony, and tension.
The DROP LINE series, and Between Man and God specifically, reflect an ideology grounded in the balancing of opposites: chaos and order, motion and stillness, material and metaphysical. In this dialectic lies the vitality of Samaj’s practice, which he approaches as both a meditation and an improvisation.
Choreographing the Canvas: A Legacy in Movement
To fully grasp the essence of Between Man and God, one must understand the artist’s multidisciplinary roots. Samaj’s early formation in the arts unfolded across three disciplines—painting, music, and dance—all of which he pursued simultaneously in San Francisco during the 1970s. At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Anna Halprin’s Dancer’s Workshop, and Antioch University West’s School of Art, Samaj developed a creative language rooted in the body, the ear, and the eye.
This intersectional training manifests vividly in his paintings, which are often described as choreographies of pigment. The lines pulse with musical rhythm; the composition sways and pivots like a dance. The gestural quality of Between Man and God—its fluid marks, contrasting textures, and emotive movement—evokes not only the physicality of the human figure but also the intangible presence of spirit.
A Voice Within the American Abstract Tradition
While Samaj’s methods may seem singular, his work resonates deeply with the American abstract tradition. His early mentor, Dr. Francis Coelho of Antioch University West, regarded him as a successor to the Northwest School of Abstract Expressionism, citing the influence of figures like Mark Tobey and Kenneth Callahan. Yet Samaj’s trajectory has been distinctly his own.
In 1994, critic Deloris Tarzan Ament noted that he was “a serious contribution to Northwest Art,” a sentiment supported by a body of work now spanning more than four decades. The unique matrix he weaves—between abstract theory and tangible materiality—has earned him a place among artists who have transformed the language of painting into a deeply personal vocabulary.
The Sacred and the Secular
Between Man and God operates in that liminal zone between the sacred and the secular. It is both a spiritual artifact and a contemporary visual work. There is no direct iconography here—no figures, no temples—but the composition nonetheless evokes a space of worship, or perhaps confrontation, with a higher power.
This ambiguity—this refusal to define the “entity” being addressed—invites viewers into their own meditative state. Who is the man? Who is the god? Is the tension between them one of reverence, or rebellion? The absence of clarity is part of the work’s potency. It leaves space for projection, interpretation, and introspection.
The Poetics of Gesture
Central to Samaj’s visual language is the notion of gesture—not just as a painterly device, but as a philosophical one. The gestural lines in Between Man and God are not decorative or expressive in a conventional sense; they are existential marks, each stroke a thought, a breath, a decision. Like a poem composed with brush and pigment, the work captures the fleeting, fragmented essence of human experience.
In this way, Samaj’s paintings resemble musical improvisations or dance improvisations—temporary arrangements of form that nonetheless hold emotional permanence. There is a distinct logic to the chaos, a meticulous attention to rhythm and spatial relationships that belies the spontaneity of execution.
A Lexicon Fully Formed
With Between Man and God, Samaj proves once again that he has arrived fully in his own space. While he acknowledges the influence of the Northwest School, his work is not derivative; rather, it is a continuation and expansion of a tradition, marked by personal vision and aesthetic discipline.
As Dr. Coelho once observed, “In his knowledge there is a science. It’s the definition of aesthetics: the science of beauty.” That science, in Samaj’s hands, becomes a form of alchemy—transforming movement into meaning, and pigment into prayer.
