Backward Painting

Liz Rundorff Smith draws inspiration from everyday motifs that are often overlooked like architectural lines, street signs, weeds growing through cracks in pavement, graffiti, plastic fences, and dumpsters. Her oil on panel and mixed media encaustic work brings personal experience to the familiar forms of minimalism while undermining the notion of aesthetic autonomy. Rundorff Smith questions the unique object by intentionally mimicking the same forms repeatedly, attempting to reproduce the original while allowing imperfection and a lack of precision to create work that exploits the failure in repetition. The reductive form is a means for conveying both the emotional and physical experience of space. Liz Rundorff Smith received a BA in Studio Art from the College of Wooster in Wooster, OH in 2000. She also studied abroad at The Marchutz School of Painting in Aix en Provence, France and The British Institute of Florence in Florence, Italy. In December of 2005, Rundorff Smith received an MFA in Painting from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. In 2006 she was awarded a fellowship and residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA. Rundorff Smith currently lives in Greenville, SC where she is both Art School Director and a Resident Studio Artist with the Greenville Center for Creative Arts.