Cary Smith: The Battle of Evermore14 April –19 May 2007  < 2007 page   < artist page
During the late '80s and early '90s, I enjoyed Cary Smith's elegantly formal and minimal paintings, storing them in my head left side of stiff or academic as to the peculiar and seemingly personal decisions which peppered their otherwise strict structures. Writing that now made me think of Charles Ives, the innovative composer living by day as an insurance salesman. Ives lived in Connecticut; Smith lives there now.

The most recent paintings by Cary Smith expand and specify my earlier perception of his work. They remain hard edged, rather gorgeous, and formally reductive in color and vocabulary, yet they also emit an odd exuberance which with time often translates into urgency. His titles point to this.

And as one examins the relationships between titles and the organic, curvy lines and shapes that form his rorschach-like vocabulary, one becomes sucked into the technical aspects of the paint application.

The brushstrokes are repetitive, methodical, and practical in their groupings, flip flopping between tight obsessive and easy expressive. Minutia, in terms of quantity of paint, coverage, direction and length of stroke, and as well, how the pristine, meticulous lines or shapes that have not been masked or mucked with expose the glowing blank underpainting, propels one to fathom an artist driven by and intimate and deep investment that also has a sense of humor.
Cary Smith, Mind Games, 2005 csf0501 Cary Smith, My World Too, 2006-7 csf0707 Cary Smith, Up Against Sublime Fears, 2006 nsf0601  Cary Smith, Self Portrait, 2005  nsf0505   Cary Smith, House of Circles, 2007 csf0705   Cary Smith, House of Circles (blue), 2007 csf0706   Cary Smith, Looking for a Way Out, 2007 csf0704   Cary Smith, Mesmerized By It All, 2006-7 csf0708   Cary Smith, It’s a Family Affair, 2006 csf0607  
> scroll to see more space Up Against Sublime Fears, 2006; oil paint on linen; 33 x 40” My World Too, 2006-7; oil paint on linen; 36.25 x 37" Mind Games, 2005; oil paint on linen; 40 x 34.5” space Self Portrait, 2005; oil paint on linen;
23.75 x 17.75”
space House of Circles, 2007; oil paint on linen; 36 x 36” space House of Circles (blue), 2007; oil paint on linen; 23.75 x 23.75” space Looking for a Way Out, 2007; oil paint on linen; 36 x 36” space Mesmerized By It All, 2006-7; oil paint on linen; 38 x 38” space It’s a Family Affair, 2006; oil paint on linen; 33 x 40” space
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