Tim Sample is a Maine-born humorist, illustrator, and beloved voice of Yankee culture whose intricate pen-and-ink drawings reveal a quieter, more intimate creative life running beneath five decades of public performance. Trained at the Portland School of Art and known across New England for his albums, books, and appearances on CBS Sunday Morning, Tim Sample spent years filling over one hundred Bristol pads with stream-of-consciousness drawings made entirely for himself — in airports, waiting rooms, and meeting halls, with no audience and no agenda.
What emerged from those pages surprised even him: hybrid creatures, abstract landscapes, and Maine shorelines rearranged in dreamlike ways that form a visual vocabulary rooted in recovery, memory, and the quiet joy of making. Represented by Portland Art Gallery, Tim Sample creates drawings that feel both deeply personal and universally human.
What does a performer discover when he finally puts down the microphone and picks up a pen — and what lives inside one hundred pads of drawings that no one was ever meant to see?