| Ludlow Smethurst was
born in St. Paul, MN, and received a BA degree from Mount
Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA. She is a member of the
National Association of Women Artists, the New Jersey Watercolor
Society and other more local artists’ organizations.
Her work has been widely exhibited in the New York-New Jersey
metropolitan area. Some recent exhibitions have included:
2003 The Cottage Place Gallery,
Ridgewood, NJ*
2002 Nexus Gallery, New York,
NY
2001 Studio Montclair, Montclair,
NJ
1999 Arts Forum, New York, NY – Four
Person Show
1997 L’Atelier, Piermont,
NY*
1995 Bergen Museum of Art & Science,
Paramus, NJ*
James Beard Foundation, New York, NY*
1994 Ben Shahn Gallery, William Paterson University,
Wayne, NJ – “Art: New Jersey”
Roundabout Theatre Gallery, New York, NY – Four Person Show
*One Person Show
A painter working in watercolor (sometimes combined
with pastel) and in oil, Smethurst also occasionally
uses acrylic and has begun to explore print-making,
especially etching. Her subject matter is taken
from the close world around her – the still-life
elements, interiors and people she sees every day.
“What I love most is the paint itself – the
mark of a brushstroke, the surprise of color mixtures,
the buttery slide and shine of oils, the runniness
and beautiful transparency of watercolor. The beauty
of color and shadow shapes inspire me – for
example, the one formed on the face of a child
standing on the dock in the sun or those striping
across a screened porch on an early summer morning.
Yet for still-life painted indoors, diffused light
seems more interesting, especially if there seems
to be more than one source.
”Patterns and crowded spaces are fun for
me. Often I use comics or newsprint as pattern
and am amused by the words that jump out at me
as I set up a still-life. Mirrors fascinate me.
Every mirror has a history of reflected images,
and the older the mirror is, the more mystery it
contains. Multiple mirrors can reflect each other
to infinity, or, turned at various angles, can
make visible the unseen aspects of objects, people
and interior settings, an idea expressed by the
Cubists in their insistence on seeing all sides
of a subject at once.
“So these are some of the elements that
are seeable in a representational painting and
that are accessible to everyone, given even the
briefest glance. More careful study often brings
other rewards. An artist's ‘inner space'
appears in paintings unbidden and is the soul partially
revealed. No one can read this exactly, not even
(or maybe especially) the artist. But if the viewer
feels some recognition (amusement, joy, sadness,
etc.) between him or her self and the work, some
part of the inner space of both the artist and
the viewer has connected. What could be more wonderful
than that?!”
the viewer has connected. What could be more
wonderful than that?!.
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