Artist Profile

Smith began painting with watercolor, but soon moved to oil on canvas because she loves the texture of oil paint. Like "spreading soft butter," she says. Her paintings are vivid, multi layered, full of light and shadow and reflect her state of mind as much as they do her surroundings...the Coromandel gives her space to paint.
Photography allows her to invade other people's space. "In another life I might have been a paparazzi." She is only kidding...Taking a photograph allows her the excuse to look, and looking is important to an artist...to see human interaction, details and expressions on people's faces, to focus on the specific rather than the general, to capture a moment that might otherwise be lost: one leaf plastered on a window; an instant's humour at a gathering; a single stone on a beach..