Described as “trans-dimensional,” Charlotte Smith’s works are at once sculptural paintings and painted sculpture. Building multi-colored strata of paint, Smith variously flattens the paint blobs onto the surface of the canvas, creating colorful, confetti-like concentric circles. In other works, she attaches slender stacks of droplets to the canvas, evoking dangling stalactites or beaded strings. Finally, she abandons the substrate altogether, creating piles of paint blob ropes. While the influence of French Pointillist Georges Seurat is evident, Smith is much more interested in the manipulation of the material and repetitive mark making than creating a specific image.
In her most recent work, Smith layers glossy droplets of paint over brightly colored and textured backgrounds of polychromatic drips, puddles and pools. Again avoiding overt imagery, the canvases are reminiscent of seascapes (Lost in You 2, 2011), fields of flowers (Coralushcious, 2011), or even something that might be encountered under a microscope (Gray Glow, 2011). Smith’s fields of color swirl and melt. “This series signals a breakthrough, a point of departure,” writes art critic Catherine Anspon. “Smith’s convincing, surely applied brushwork and new, inventive media are novel and pioneering…. It’s not necessary to know how these sculptural canvases were formed. It’s enough to simply savor the effects.”
Smith received an MFA from the University of North Texas at Denton in 1999. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have been hosted at Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas; Anya Tish Gallery, Houston; and George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles. Her work is included in the exhibition Obsessive Worlds currently on view at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont. Smith is included in the publication Texas Artists Today, written by Catherine Anspon and published in 2010 by Marquand Books. The artist currently lives and works in Dallas.
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The Galveston Art Center
