Samantha KEELY SMITH

"The artwork represents a striving to reconcile the inner world of instinct and emotions, with an external world that is both beautiful and hostile in its natural grandeur. It is an attempt to map the place where these worlds intersect. The paintings are an investigation of the struggle between a variety of human impulses: impulses that are as necessary as they are contradictory, and which therefore constantly undermine our psychic and social coherence even as they endow us with vitality, soul, and life.

The translucent layers of paint, contrasting soft ethereal brushwork and harder edged sweeping gestures, echo this divergence and depict a timeless place that hovers between dream and reality. The work is painted and partially destroyed many times before completion, resulting in a complex surface that is informed by the limits of the materials themselves in conjunction with a response to the traces of the painting’s former incarnations. " SKS

Bio

Born in Harlow, Essex, England, New York-based artist Samantha Keely Smith moved to the United States as a child with her family.

Smith started her College Education at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. She also attended the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, earning her BFA in Painting, with Honors.