About Sammi

Since her early childhood, Samantha Davies has worked to encase and express strong emotion through a mixture of illustration and story telling. Much of her inspiration comes from personal struggles, things that are normally overlooked, and a mixture of comic and anime culture. Her pieces embody some of her own life experiences, as well as visions from an outcast community.

My Story

Hello you beautiful and strange individual! I would like to thank you for visiting my website, it means a lot to me to have your support. Looking to know more about me? Well jeeze, where do I even begin...
I was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina and lived for a while on a sunlit spackled street. I remember running barefoot in the back yard, trying to have my brother launch me from tree branches in an effort to go to space, playing video games to my heart's content and finding a love for the Legend of Zelda series...and most of all, I remember coloring with my mom. To me she could color perfectly, and it was then that I decided that someday I would draw coloring books for her to color in. As you might have guessed, this is where my pursuit of illustration started. I was motivated, and I took inspiration from the cartoons I would watch; shows like Yugioh and Pokemon. I even remember sneaking around as a young kid to wake up at 5am and try to catch Inuyasha on TV with my brother...which didnt happen too often, but I loved the show all the same. At that age I remember inventing my imaginary friend to keep me company while my brother was at school - because he's 5 years older than me - and writing/drawing silly stories about her to entertain myself and my parents. My life was pretty content and I remember being happy...but things kind of went downhill from there.
I remember around the age of 7 I got really sick. I couldn't breathe correctly, and I was rushed to a hospital where I remember staying for what seemed like a very long time. It was only two weeks from what I'm told. As it turned out, I had somehow got pneumonia and bronchitis at the same time all from a small cold. They ran tests after tests, fed me aerosol after aerosol, and I remember sleeping lucid dreams. In one of these dreams I remember being strapped to the hospital wall, wrapped in cords and machines and my body not being whole....another, what I believe was an angel came to visit my bedside. It could have just been the sun shining brightly in the corner of my room...but I believe it was something else.
After a lot of this, I was told I had what they called a "Congenital Lung Defect," which meant my lungs didn't develop correctly. My bronchial tubes fused, and one lobe didn't grow like it should have...it caused me severe asthma my whole life and I still live with it today. Thankfully though as an adult, breathing comes easier.
After this moment in my life, I remember my parents fighting often. They eventually divorced. My mother took my brother and me and went to Florida, where her family lived. I dont remember much of that time, beyond doing the same things I did before. I do remember feeling heartbreak, and my imaginary friend, my art, my stories, and video games becoming a coping method. We moved again while we lived there into a tiny apartment. My dad got custody of my brother and I, and we moved back to South Carolina, but a different city. We bounced from place to place a lot back then...I remember my dad struggling to find a home for us with one income. People we stayed with would abuse us and treat us badly, many of them tried to fill the gap where my mother was missing...but of course, people do not like guests in their home too long, even if they have children. Over the years, my depression threatened me. I avoided making friends because I knew I would just move to another place. Instead I tried to be friends with the kids who were outcast, and offer them what I could of love, hope, and light. I hope I impacted them in the short time I had with them, and that they have good lives today. Naturally, I kept drawing to ward off my own depression. I met many different outcasted people who had beautiful souls, and many of them became my source of inspiration. I was introduced more in depth into japanese culture, and I swam through manga books like oceans of dreams. Something about how the art seemed to shimmer on every page spoke to me. I wanted to draw them. I remember studying them - the way the lines curved, broke apart, thickened and ebbed away. I would draw anime studies every single day. Around this time I had decided to try and write out the battle with depression I was in - the fight inside me between dark and light. It consumed me. In a way, it made the depression disappear. When my gaze was inside the void of the paper, I was somewhere else. I was different - whoever I wanted to be. I had any friend I wanted, and I didnt have to worry about losing them to location differences. I was free...I was safe. I could express the pain in my heart and not be judged, or have to struggle to find the words.
My mom eventually moved back with us, though my parents never got back together. She of course was no longer the same...after all I hadnt seen her for over 5 years. My dad did eventually find us a permanent home, but that didn't happen until I was around 15, I think.
I do not remember much from those younger years. Depression and trauma response stole them away from me.
But, along my journey to find a home, I came to a place in Michigan. In this place, while living out of an RV at 15, it became winter and I had to stay with a friend to stay warm. It was here that I encountered what would come to be my future husband, and right hand character in my story: Randy.
Of course, my parents didn't like him. They tried to keep us apart, and to my deep-seated and all-to-expectant fear, they moved from that city and into a few different ones. Once again I had lost someone I had accidentally grown close to, and even worse, I had fallen in love with this one. But out of all of the lost friends on my list, strangely enough, he didn't go anywhere. He would walk to places to find internet in the middle of the rain to message me for 5 minutes with. He walked across the city just so see me when my parents had to come through for something. He didnt give up on me, and I love this man with all of my heart and soul. Finally, I decided to leave my parents house, and he came and took me back with him. I was finally back someplace I never thought I would see again, somewhere I belonged: home.

To this day, we live together here in Michigan. As I write this, I am 25, and we have 3 beautiful children together. I still love him as if no time has passed.

So, there you have it I suppose. My artwork has been a coping method for me for as long as I can remember. I am a little more open to sharing the darker sides of myself these days, and sometimes it shows in my work. I feel like I am two sides of a coin: I have beautiful color filled days of artwork, and others are filled with scribbled thoughts and distress. I illustrate the same story that I have been hammering out for a decade, and it gets better each day. My imaginary world and my friends exist there where I can find them, and I hope to illustrate my great battle with the darkness well enough for others to relate to. I hope that in the end it shares hope with them, that light can always find its way through, even if the darkness feels all consuming. And today, while this battle is still very much real, I find happiness around me, and light shimmering through the cracks. 

Thank you for reading, and taking the time to get to know me some. I hope I will continue to be blessed with your support.

-Sammi Davies