Phone photos accumulate from daily life, interiors from vacations, walks around the neighborhood, trips with friends, photos of kids. The drawings are made from these images with soft pastel on Sennelier Carte Pastel which has a toothy, sandpaper like surface. The paper allows for many layers of pastel to accumulate with very little binder, permitting the pigments to shine through. It’s tactile and direct - no brush, no medium, just the hand and a stick of pigment. The images and technique work together to get into the indirect spaces - the way we experience the world through photography and memory layered on our actual experiences. The timing is slow - creating space to dig in through technique, through selections of certain images, and increased closeness with the materials. Image selection is a mood and also a formal puzzle, reflecting a decision-making process that has clear motives about leaving something unclear or partly figured. Oversaturated light, woodgrain, hair, sand, soft and spiky cactus parts are the partners in the puzzles, looking deeply at the surfaces and atmosphere to get to the underneath and in between spaces.
René Smith lives in Oakland and works in Berkeley, California. She has shown her work in New York, Thailand, and Italy in solo and group shows. She received her M.F.A. in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and her B.A. in Painting from Bennington College in Vermont. She was a Visiting Lecturer in Painting at Chiang Mai University and has also taught in Philadelphia, New York and Rome.
Email: rene@renesmith.net