All images on this site copyright Seth Smith 2011 all rights reserved
painting
"Seth Smith bills himself as an abstract artist -- and, to be fair, a lot of his work
in tonight's opening at the Rice Gallery of Fine Art fits that description perfectly.
The thing is, though, that some of Smith's most affecting new pieces contain
concrete imagery (and iconic imagery at that) placed into unreal settings.
Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time in Kansas City will recognize
Winstead's, the subject of today's featured piece, the oil-on-board Steads. Smith
has yanked the drive-in out of its normal surroundings and placed it in an open
space where clouds that look like potatoes hover overhead. (Yes, Winstead's is a
chain, so its normal surroundings will vary. None of those environs look like this,
though.)
He gives the same treatment to another beloved local institution, Town Topic, and
to various other Midwestern establishments. In each case, the painting takes on
the feel of a dream -- one in which the familiarity of the known only increases the
strangeness of its surroundings.
Smith's artist's statement does much the same thing. He takes recognizable
places and images -- among them DINERS, TRAiNS and FERRIS WHEELS ON FIRE
-- and scrawls them in the skyspace of a photograph of a motel awning. It's
cryptic ... but that makes it a perfect explanation for Smith's work.
If your taste runs away from brick and mortar, Smith offers something softer --
which, while largely abstract in nature, still retain recognizable imagery (or at
the very least, suggest it). Many of those paintings recall clouds -- both the sort
you find in the sky and the kind you see through telescopes in deep space.
So, perhaps, Smith's work is less abstract than abstracting ... with the power to
pull the viewer into his dreamscapes for a few hours of pleasurable wandering.
And if all the road food in his works makes you hungry -- well, the hamburger
joints stay open late on Friday night."
-Steve Brisendine
ReView Mid America's Visual Arts Publication
in tonight's opening at the Rice Gallery of Fine Art fits that description perfectly.
The thing is, though, that some of Smith's most affecting new pieces contain
concrete imagery (and iconic imagery at that) placed into unreal settings.
Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time in Kansas City will recognize
Winstead's, the subject of today's featured piece, the oil-on-board Steads. Smith
has yanked the drive-in out of its normal surroundings and placed it in an open
space where clouds that look like potatoes hover overhead. (Yes, Winstead's is a
chain, so its normal surroundings will vary. None of those environs look like this,
though.)
He gives the same treatment to another beloved local institution, Town Topic, and
to various other Midwestern establishments. In each case, the painting takes on
the feel of a dream -- one in which the familiarity of the known only increases the
strangeness of its surroundings.
Smith's artist's statement does much the same thing. He takes recognizable
places and images -- among them DINERS, TRAiNS and FERRIS WHEELS ON FIRE
-- and scrawls them in the skyspace of a photograph of a motel awning. It's
cryptic ... but that makes it a perfect explanation for Smith's work.
If your taste runs away from brick and mortar, Smith offers something softer --
which, while largely abstract in nature, still retain recognizable imagery (or at
the very least, suggest it). Many of those paintings recall clouds -- both the sort
you find in the sky and the kind you see through telescopes in deep space.
So, perhaps, Smith's work is less abstract than abstracting ... with the power to
pull the viewer into his dreamscapes for a few hours of pleasurable wandering.
And if all the road food in his works makes you hungry -- well, the hamburger
joints stay open late on Friday night."
-Steve Brisendine
ReView Mid America's Visual Arts Publication
