Sammy Paloma is an artist, poet and witch living in Shetland, UK, on a croft by a beach, next to a bog, with 11 chickens, 15 minutes’ drive from the most northerly fish and chip shop in the UK. She paints pictures of sewers, hand poke tattoos, writes poetry, and makes computer games. Her work is into listening to faeries, how divination disturbs linear time, grief rituals, toilets, and necromancy.
She is a student of European folk magic practices, with particular emphasis on rituals and practices focussed on protection magic. Both her creative and magical work always start from place-based folklore, using a combination of research and personal gnosis in attending to the gods, spirits and dead of the particular land she is living with.
Recent projects include: The Well of Sickness Shimmering, a computer game made in collaboration with Uma Breakdown exploring the folklore of holy wells (launching Spring 2023); Bog-lore, an exhibition of prints exploring toilets as portals to the Otherworld at Gaada, Shetland (March 2023); and Descent to Kilgrimol Rx, a solo show at Abingdon Studios, Blackpool (2022), which eulogised the lost 13th Century hamlet of Kilgrimol, and the souls that disappeared with it.