David Smith

"Slant Light" 28" x 16" oil, broom straws on linen framedSOLD		"Cascade" 26" x 32" oil on linen framed$2,000
"Water Triptych" 24.5"x 7.5" oil on panel framed$600		"Earl Spring " 32" x 18" oil on linen framed$1,600

"...Some have been in process since a year ago last spring, a very few sprang like mushrooms,...they seem to have a common DNA in the sense of emerging from the same experience in different forms. A year ago last spring I was in turmoil and began to treat my paintings like my life by kicking the supports out from under them. I operated with the notion that I wouldn't know if I'd gone far enough until I went too far, and then I could always learn and come back in some. Or keep going. This also addresses the question: After spending a lifetime of building a body of work, a world in visual form, is there value in appearing to throw it away? I think the word "appearing" is the key. We can't escape our core, for better or worse, but we can still grow from experience, embrace the scars and marks of experience like brushstrokes visible under others so that, like a painting, those marks, errant or not, are a part of the whole.

Some paintings began with straw soaked in alkyd medium then stuck on linen. One had string, another had dried roses. These were devices for getting me past where I was, and they were metaphors as well. As the paintings evolved and I discovered their limits and their suggestions I began to tear off things they didn't need, uncovering things in the process that continued to suggest things I wouldn't have thought of. This, I think, is the essence of work, when the only way to create things that are new to me is to put the time in and pay attention to what's happening. John Cage was asked about his process and he said that the work makes the work. I think this is what he meant.

In the end, I think I've done what I always do and give no apologies. I follow my nose and don't worry about it. I ultimately work representationally, even though I think abstractly, because I like the tension between the represented image and the medium it's made from. And I serve the paintings and do whatever they need me to do with the trust that I'll learn from them."

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