Sam Robinson was born in New York, NY in 1953. The son of medical missionaries with The United Presbyterian Church, he lived in Seoul, South Korea from 1960 to 1971 with two one year furloughs in Baltimore, MD. Since then he has resided primarily in the Baltimore area with his wife and two children.

Sam's earliest art education was in Asian brush painting. Several years of study culminated in a year of work with Kim Ke Chang, one of Korea's recognized masters. He attended the Seoul Foreign School from first grade through high school, and St. Paul's School in Baltimore during furlough years. Sam went on to art school at the Maryland Institute College of Art, majoring in painting and graduating Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in 1978. After graduation Sam founded The Valley Craftsmen, Ltd., which provides decorative painting and murals to the architecture and interior design market.

Sam has continuously maintained his studio work but has chosen not to pursue gallery representation or to show frequently, until recently; partly due to the requirements of running a business, raising children and making the choice to keep his painting free from other pressures. The decision to ignore public presentations has allowed wide ranging experimentation in styles to take place. Beginning, in school with a devotion to traditional representation his experiments have ranged through post-impressionism (particularly influenced by Bonnard and Vuillard), a kind of Pop (derived from fashion imagery), pure abstraction, expressionism (Beckmann), and a kind of surrealism based on bio-morphic forms.

All this has come full circle as Sam has returned to his original passion for representation with a strong emphasis on expressive brush work (the Asian ink painting instruction). Having explored attempts to find a personal expression in other approaches to painting Sam has settled on the idea of an "American Poetic Realism". "American" in the sense of choosing subjects from his own life experience, the American landscape in particular. "Poetic" indicates an intention not to describe, but to create metaphors for vision with the material of paint. "Realism" as in keeping ones' feet firmly planted in the particular experience of a time and place.

Following are exhibitions Sam has participated in: Garrison Forest School - Performing Arts Center Group Exhibition - 1981 Baltimore City Hall - Artists and Craftsmen Show - 1986 School 33 - Two Man Show - 1987 Unicorn Gallery at Universalist Unitarian Church - One Man Show - 1988 Maryland Institute College of Art Alumni Show 2001, 2002, 2003 Art Week 2000 - Baltimore Choral Arts Society Benefit Show - 2002, 2003, 2004 Steven Scott Gallery - Landscapes: 15th Anniv. Summer Group Show- 2003 Steven Scott Gallery - New Works by Gallery Artists - 2003 Steven Scott Gallery - Regarding Nature - 2003 Steven Scott Gallery - Rooms "With Views" - 2004 Steven Scott Gallery - New Horizons: 16th Anniv. Summer Group Show - 2004 Artscape - Hall of Portraits - 2004 Steven Scott Gallery - Solo Exhibition: New Landscapes and Interiors - 2004

Currently his original paintings are represented by Steven Scott Gallery. Sam Robinson also paints Fine Art Portraits by private commission. He is a member of The Portrait Society of America and recipient of an award for "Best Portfolio" at the 2002 conference.