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Visit “CHASING LIGHT” exhibit page for more information/images

What makes the next moment unlike any other that came before?

The curtain parts. A parked car moves and reveals a once hidden scene. The sun arcs half of one degree and the light shifts beyond recognition. A bee lights on a clover. The flower quivers. The next moment, stillness. Did any of this ever happen?

I’m not a storyteller, but I sometimes consider myself a fiction painter. I use fictional visual images from memory. Different imagined scenes incorporated into paintings to portray a truth. Oil paint covers well. The new day and a new session might make yesterday’s painting entirely different. What happened? Did I change so much, spinning around my core, or did something I happened to see uncover a different version of the truth?

Much eludes me here. I like that mystery and surprise, when I see something I see over and over with the day’s fresh eye.

David Smith, born 1950, studied art as an undergraduate at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT.  He also studied ceramics, painting and book illustration in Goddard’s Adult Degree Program.  He has worked with children making public art, has taught painting and has been a scenic designer, painter and graphic designer in Philadelphia and New York City.  He is currently an exhibiting artist in Vermont, where he has lived since 1974, and also an architectural and woodworking designer and builder.  His artwork has been used on CD covers, book covers and publications, television production sets and can be found in public and private collections across the United States and Europe.