About Sam

Sam Doe is a Boston born painter based in New York. They spent the majority of their childhood living on the east coast enjoying the snowy winters and humid summers. Their childhood has had a tremendous influence on the current focus of their work, looking into their personal experience with the false promise of the Troubled Teen Industry. 

After two years experiencing intense struggles with depression and attending numerous pediatric psychiatric wards, Sam was involuntarily brought to Uinta Academy. Since its establishment in 2003, Uinta has been a program deeply integrated within the Troubled Teen Industry. Having their childhood disrupted by being ripped from all familiarity and community has left residual rage in the artist and a drive for community action to better support survivors of the industry and those currently held in it. Folded into their personal childhood centered work is the present experience of being a gender-fluid and non-conforming person. Honoring their current physical manifestation through painting the contorted and abstracted figure, coupled with remembering the child self they once were are core qualities in Doe’s work. They hope survivors and allies alike can connect and empathize through these works for the efforts to abolish the TTI.