"Wherever that is, I want to go and live there" is a comment that most aptly describes the feeling when you see Samuel Schout's landscape art for the first time. His work carries the love of a moment in nature, captured in the interplay of colour and form. Samuel's work reflects the typically free spirited characteristics of Impressionist art, aiming to seize the essence of a landscape and translating it into a vibrant canvas.

Samuel's artistic ability has been recognised since early childhood, he even attended an art nursery school while growing up in the coastal town of Port Elizabeth. He has been blessed with artistic skills coming from both his mother and father's side of the family. Some of his fondest childhood memories are of painting side-by-side to his grandfather on the dining room table during school holidays. His grandfather introduced him to painting impressionist landscapes in oils and his aunt taught him how to paint in watercolours. It is in honour to his grandfather that he would later also paint under the old Dutch family name of Schout, a solemn promise he made during one of those extended summer painting holidays in Klerksdorp.

During his senior Primary School years his ability was formally recognised by an exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum, where he exhibited a portrait study executed in the style of the grand masters. After that, his teachers and family regularly vied over who should buy his latest painting and he frequently attained close to perfect scores for his art projects. The school years flew by quickly and Samuel found himself engrossed in his studies at Pretoria University, where he didn't attend any art courses, but instead focused all his attention on Social Studies and obtained a post-graduate degree. The artist in Samuel yearned for expression and manifested in providing innovative solutions in the business world, but still the hunger for art remained while he painted canvasses in his mind at his desk.

At last after a hiatus of over a decade, the now more mature artist broke free from the cocoon that bound him and once again spread his canvasses open to capture the nature of art. He still paints on the dining room table, but now in the house he shares with his beloved wife and son. Both of whom are also his most revered critics when it comes to his work. He believes that art should be easily understood and immediately liked, even by a toddler. Any of his canvasses that do not pass this acid test, is summarily discarded if a simple solution to the offending brush strokes is not found.

The pent-up paintings gathered over years of dream painting are now finally coming to light, bursting on the scene in canvass after canvass of colour and light, celebrating nature and life.