Bazaar Insider

Meet Samantha Everton and there’s not a hint of her challenging, Gothic work about her. She’s a sunny, bright redhead and yet her latest exhibition is nothing if not dark, with a sort of tainted whimsy.

Everton began her career as a hairdresser, but a creative life always held allure. After applying unsuccessfully to TAFE, she enrolled in photography night classes and determinedly made her way finally to RMIT where she took out the Best Student Award and Best Creative Portfolio in her graduation year.

Today, her extraordinary photos sell for nearly $2000 each unframed, her work has appeared in The New Yorker magazine and she’s won a swag of awards. She says her latest exhibition, Childhood Fears captures the nexus between reality and fantasy that often ignites the imagination in childhood.

She readily admits she’s a “perfectionist”, storyboarding every image before creating the set. “It takes a year or longer to develop a body of work. The actual day is a huge production. It looks like a movie set. The image Don’t Let Go had 10 people on set including the pigeon trainer,” she explains.

Sometimes an idea will come from a found object, such as in the case of the image Night Without Darkness where she discovered a white dress in an op shop and could barely breathe with excitement. “It was an original 1950s party dress that was absolutely tiny.” She then had to find two girls who could fit into it. “That was a challenging one,” she says.

And the future? “I’m interested in light and how it changes the feelinmg and mood of public places. I’m thinking of throwing myself into that kind of area.”

Our advice? Snap up one of these limited-edition images now as Everton is an artist who is going places.