Smith uses this tactic in works of varying scales. Night Twitch and Night Baptism seem like an inverted mirrored pair, each set in tension with the other, their surfaces arrayed with the gestures of Smith’s markmaking, their curved edges rolling away from and under the other. Although black at first glance, they are in fact studies in tone and texture, filled with chiaroscuro, subtle plays of both stillness and motion. Smith’s painting Night Mass (image shown), an intimate 27 x 27 inch work, continues this exploration, its surface filled with subtle geometric shapes that emerge at the top and the hint of a horizon line lower. This oscillation between abstraction and the use of concrete forms creates and even more discernable tension within each work.

Smith’s understandings of pictorial space in abstraction come roaring forward in another new work, Night at the Orchestra (scroll down for image), which takes the depths of Night Mass and adds a spatial geometry, pushing forward and into the viewers’ space.

Copy Cat, a new 48 x 48 inch painting (scroll down for image), literally feels as if it could leap off the wall. Its forms seem as if they could reflect, veil and reveal at precisely the same moment as Smith pushes viewers away, holds them close and pulls them through in the same moment. Smith understands the complexities of abstraction and he uses both the surfaces and the structures of his works to create tensions that are palpable. His works are filled with suggestions of the familiar. They are both wondrous and comforting.

They are, in his words, As I Remembered.