Statement
STATEMENT
As my work evolves and becomes more layered I find myself exploring patterns in nature and playing with scale, detail, color, and line that reaches into abstraction through floating shapes that are interwoven with a colorful under layer.
Smith is a multi-media artist, and her work is a reflection that describes the complex counterbalance of asymmetries found in the dynamic forces of nature. She explores balance, examining ‘Patterns’ in our environment. Subtle variations of complementary hues, and warm and cool rhythms of light create an equivalence on all sides of the canvas. Layers of color, sometimes precisely blocking color first, then building, patterning and layering again. Beyond just recording nature, her work involves feeling nature’s rhythms and changing seasons, very influenced by her solitary walks and direct relationship with the environment in California.
“Kerrie Smith builds her abstract compositions with multiple layers of pattern, color, and an array of techniques and tools, as she seeks a balance between feral nature and its geometrical armature. With a mindful intention to capture not only the grandeur but also the unpredictability and potential for crisis in our environment, Smith’s work challenges conventions of organic and artificial beauty. Distilling a sense of place from encounters with the natural and industrial worlds -- and especially their intersections -- Smith evokes paradoxical, even contradictory emotions at the same time. Optimism and expansiveness, threat and distress, symmetry and entropy, creation and destruction.”
Andi Campognone Director of MOAH (Museum of Art and History) Lancaster.
“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. Across works for wall, floor, and architectural suspension, her unfurling, mandalic energy hotspots are prismatic like church windows and in a way there is scripture—in the form of calligraphic poetry. Her layering of pattern, image, and pure medium create tapestry-like works with texture and movement, interlacing fractal forms in a way that organizes dimensional space as well as pictorial. Her background in theatrical design makes itself felt here, giving direction to her desire to create experience beyond imagery.”
Shana Nys Dambrot, Arts Editor L.A. Weekly, and a contributor to Flaunt, Artillery, and other culture publications.
“Kerrie Smith’s art is a delight to the senses. She is as comfortable with realism as she is abstraction. What unites her work is her joyous palette of bright, clear colors, which she layers into rhythmic forms or undulating patterns of geometric shapes. It is hard to come away from a Smith painting or installation and not feel better for the positive energy they exude. The viewer might be in the midst of a spring garden, fully flush with colorful flowers or spinning through a star-studded, vivid nebula in the galaxy…her works are transcendent. Her paintings take the viewer beyond the limits of the physical world to a place or space that is vibrant and extraordinary.”
Dr. Judy Larson Director, Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. Askew Professor of Art History