Sam B. Kennedy a finalist for SAA Artists of the Year 2025
I’m absolutely thrilled to share that my painting ‘Cooking with Gas’ has been selected as a finalist for the SAA Artists of the Year 2025 award. Out of thousands of entries, just 50 pieces were chosen, so to find my work among them is incredible. Additionally, it’s in the running for the People’s Choice Award and may be featured in the SAA’s finalists exhibition later this year.
This recognition is especially meaningful to me because ‘Cooking with Gas’ is a portrait- something I’ve traditionally kept a little closer to my chest. I’ve long been drawn to faces and the narratives they can hold, but haven’t always had the confidence to share my portraiture publicly. So to have this particular piece acknowledged in this way is both surreal and deeply encouraging.
If you’d like to support ‘Cooking with Gas’ in the People’s Choice Award, you can vote for my work on this page and clicking the thumbs up button. Thank you for your support!
Mixed media on wood panel, including: oil paint, acrylic paint, oil pastel, acrylic ink, and found papers. 42 x 58cm.
About the Work: ‘Cooking with Gas’
Cooking with Gas is a deeply personal and political piece. It reflects on the domestic space, womanhood, and the quiet dangers we’ve grown up around- so embedded in everyday life that we barely question them. The initial concept came from an obscure podcast episode I stumbled across, which explored the invention of gas cookers and their potential hidden health risks. It got me thinking about how often we accept certain things as “normal” or “safe” simply because they’re familiar.
From that spark of unease, an image began to form: a woman in a vintage dress, hunched over a stove, wearing a gas mask- perhaps out of necessity, perhaps out of protest. That image became a self-portrait, blending reality and metaphor.
The painting plays with the visual language of 1950s domesticity- an era when women were idealised as homemakers, even as they were often confined by those same expectations. I collaged in newspaper fragments- both puzzles and headlines- to evoke the mixed messages women continue to receive: to be both everything and not too much, to speak up but not too loudly.
Colour plays a vital role in this piece. I used a vivid palette to reflect the complexity of emotions I associate with my own identity as a 21st-century woman- feelings of liberation and frustration, hope and fury. The aesthetic is also a nod to graphic novels, with their bold, narrative-driven visuals. I wanted to borrow from that style to evoke a sense of rebellion and transformation.
I titled the piece ‘Cooking with Gas’ not just for its literal reference, but also as a tongue-in-cheek take on the expression itself. The phrase implies everything is going smoothly- but what if the very thing we’ve come to rely on- the iconic woman as the heart of the home- is also quietly harmful?
This piece is about the tension between nostalgia and progress, comfort and resistance. It’s about the stories we inherit, the roles we’re asked to play, and the slow burn of questioning it all.
Being selected for the SAA Artists of the Year 2025 feels like a moment of creative validation, and I’m incredibly grateful to the judges for seeing something in this work. Thank you also to everyone who has supported me on this journey—it really does mean the world.
So if you’d like to support me and vote for ‘Cooking with Gas’ in the People’s Choice Award, you can visit this page and clicking the thumbs up button to vote. Thank you!