Flora Ficciones 2021-ongoing
Patterns in plants slightly fantastic, appearing vividly real inspired by Californian and our changing planet that I discover, record and experience on my many walks and travels in the wilderness and other natural areas.
Influences of surrealism peek through Kerrie Smith’s work. Her personally devised gene bank of floral fantasies opens into a colorful world bursting with possibility. Her dynamic work crosses interdisciplinary lines. R.T. Livingston.
Organic shapes like sea anemones and other worldly extra terrestrial flowers. Smith’s paintings are dazzling action-packed where flowers are not simply blooming but literally bursting out of the painting. Veronica Walmsley.
Identifying the essential nature of any object - animal, mineral or vegetable - allows one to imagine all kinds of possibilities. Originally this taxonomic tool was universally in Latin twice named, the first half genus and the second half more particular. But in the artist’s world, the boundaries of names, nature and other dimensions are challenged and embellished. Each name is further adornment for a piece of the beautiful, a primordial vehicle for transcendence. The entire presentation of name and image is meant to uplift and even confound, but most of all to liberate and enjoy.
“Kerrie Smith’s paintings and mixed media compositions and installations both are and are not landscapes. Visible in glimpses, and physically present as material, the natural world is indelibly active; but her works play with scale, detail, color, and line in a way that reaches into abstraction, pattern, and pure feeling. Smith’s palette amplifies the most affecting impressions of nature, by turns gestural and supercharged or ethereal and nuanced, reflecting as much the kaleidoscope of the living planet as the abundant spectrum of spirit and psyche that being in tune with it offers” Shana Nys Dambrot, Arts Editor for L.A. Weekly/Contributor to Flaunt, Artillery, & Culture Publications
