The Big Picture Painting

Born in Berlin, Germany I have been interested in and surrounded by art all my life. My father, Eddy Smith*, was a German artist of English extraction who was well-known for his powerful, subversive copper-etchings and portraits of Berlin society figures in pre-and post-war Germany. And, although his paintings, etchings and drawings were always there for me to see, and I was always drawing, I did not really get serious about art until much later. This is because I was not in a position to get serious about my art until the advanced age of forty-five. I had travelled and lived in six different countries on four different continents (Europe, Africa, South America, and North America) before settling in England some twenty years ago. As a young mother and later as a working mother, I attended a variety of evening and extra-mural courses and summer courses to explore life drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking and textile design. I always knew that I wanted more than this but it wasnt until 1999 that I finally took the plunge and quit my well-paying, high-pressured job as a software sales exec for an American company to enroll in a one year, full-time foundation course in Art and Design at the University of Hertfordshire. This exiting and exhilarating course opened so many doors and possibilities for me that I hadn't even known existed that I decided to embark upon the part-time BA Hons. Fine Arts Degree course-a step I had previously not seriously considered. * I organised a retrospective of his work at Galerie Taube, Berlin in March 2001..htm In my work I attempt to capture the essence of things - places and houses lived in long ago whose vivid colours and smells, whose windows and doorways have lingered at the edge of my memory. I explore the relationship between the reality of the place or object and the imagined reality, in order to transform often quite ordinary images so that they become exotic and mysterious. I try to create an illusion, a feeling of heightened awareness in my images which in their final version often bear no resemblance to the original but have become enhanced and imbued with a dreamlike quality. Our memories too work like that we often see past events and places in our minds eye in an enhanced way, and give them qualities they never really had.My paintings and digital work also reflect my interest in lines and symmetry, in mark making, colour, textures and layers.