"A good painting requires thought. One can't throw
paint on canvas and hope for a masterpiece. A masterpiece
is the result of endless thought but very often looks as though
it was composed with little effort."
print
size approx. 8.5x11"
larice
Smith is an intriguing and enigmatic artist. Belonging at once
to no school yet clearly influenced by several traditions, she
creates a world through paint that is at the same time tangible
and distant; familiar yet disquieting; communal but highly personal.
Always in admiration of painters such as Ingres, Manet and Sargent
she focused her studies on traditional painting, training through
life drawing and working in oils.
Her
Paintings are a celebration of brushstroke and the expressionistic
quality of color. Both in technique and mood, her paintings share
little with the strict photo-realists who are her contemporaries
but are rather linked to earlier painters who are her inspiration.
Yet to see Clarice as a derivation of these artists is to misunderstand
her. She is an artist who responds clearly and absolutely to her
own surroundings, giving expression to them on canvas via texture
and color. Her ability to communicate to the viewer in a visual
language that is so clearly understood yet so highly personal
is a wonder. That she does this in such a tantalizing manner which
so thoroughly delights the eye is her great achievement.