User talk:Laurel Smith

www.laurelsmith.ca Laurel Smith is a contemporary minimal painter who was born in Calgary, Canada. She has exhibited paintings across North America and in Europe. She recently took part in exhibitions at Toronto's Peak Gallery (LS is More), the Nickle Arts Museum (About Time: Contemporary Painting in Calgary), Paul Kuhn Gallery (Unrepentant Exposure I& II), the Edmonton Art Gallery, New Brunswick Museum of Art, McMaster Art Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, (RBC Painting Competition), VAV Gallery, Montreal (Homecoming), Visual Arts Center, Montreal (Collective Visions), UQAM Centre de Diffusion, Montreal (Sur la Ligne/On the Line), Contemporary Museum of Art, Baltimore (Snapshot), Bourget Gallery, Montreal (Critical Distance), Laval University, Laval (Baltic Watercolors), Stride Gallery, Calgary (Painting Insides) and the Marion Nicoll +15 Gallery, Calgary (Sedimental Shifts). Her works reside in public and private collections including the Visby Konstmuseum, Glenbow Museum, and Royal Bank of Canada. Her work has appeared in Canadian Art Magazine, MAG, The Calgary Herald, Globe & Mail, Watercolor Magazine, FastForward Magazine, The Link, and in exhibition catalogues. She studied art at the University of Calgary and went on to receive a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, and a MFA from Concordia University, Montreal. Smith is the recipient of several awards including: Canada Council for the Arts; Eastern Canada Winner of the RBC Investments 6th Annual Painting Competition; The Brucebo Foundation; Concordia University Fellowship; Sheila Hugh MacKay Foundation; Alberta Foundation for the Arts; and she was awarded both the Illingworth Kerr Travel Award and the Illingworth Kerr Academic Achievement Award.

Laurel Smith was born near the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Her paintings echo that environment. The early works were constructed by applying the sludge residue of recycled oil paints onto shaped canvases. These paintings are reminiscent of the geological strata of rock formations. The shadows cast by the shaped canvases informed and evolved into her newer paintings.

Smith's current paintings are built up of more than twenty glazes of different colors applied to the surface with a squeegee. Her stretchers are custom built so one sloped edge of the painting reflects brilliant, often fluorescent color up onto the wall. This reflected color has the shifting delicacy of the hues found in a sunset. The dense color of the multi-layered surface contrasts the diaphanous color that spreads up the wall.

These paintings expand from the traditional boundaries to include the wall as part of the painting. Smith's works expose the intimate and symbiotic relationship that paintings have with their surround.