KENT MICHAEL SMITH
Gallery
Shift II, 2013, acrylic, watercolor, spray paint and resin on panel, 40″x 40″
“I endeavor to present a world that is not only susceptible to the poetics of ambiguity…. but one that thrives within these unknowns. One in which rhythmic design, sinuous forms, volatile bursts of color, as well as an awareness of the light and darkness of our lives, can take hold of each of us and give perpetual breath to our imaginings.”-Kent Michael Smith
Kent Michael Smith’s intimate paintings of color, shape and form are meticulously composed of equal parts order and intuition, sight and insight, observation and imagination. Fascinated as an observer of “extroverted subcultures”, Smith distills and extracts a visual essence from a wide range of popular, mostly male, cultural phenomena including NASCAR color schematics,
hunting gear, camouflage, and urban graffiti. He subverts the normal reading of these influences through a vocabulary of sensuous poetic abstraction, intense color, and the sheer beauty of his acrylic pigments suspended within multiple layers of clear resin. Smith’s painted shapes float over and around each other forming alliances, hovering in resin as if insects in amber. The flow of the resin over the edges of the painting is stopped when the drops freeze mid-drip like a delicious hard candy fringe.
Kent Michael Smith received his M.F.A. at Ohio University, Athens, OH and his B.F.A. at Emporia State University, Emporia, KS. His work is in numerous collections including the Amity Art Foundation, Woodbridge, CT; Kansas University Hospital, Kansas City, KS; Emprise Bank Kansas Collection, Wichita, KS; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; and Trissolini Print Collection, Ohio University, Athens, OH.