Craig Smith

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b. 1961 - Johannesburg, RSA

Craig Smith is an artist, photographer and designer. He currently lives and works between Johannesburg, as well as Stockholm, Sweden. Before committing to painting as his metier, Smith worked as an international and local award-winning production designer in film and in commercial photography.

In his more recent bodies of work, Smith’s imagery adopts a surrealist, dream-like quality. Through layers of abstraction, the works interrogate the artist’s identity as an expat living between Stockholm and Johannesburg. Elements of Greek mythology, classical figuration and natural landscape all collide in Smith’s process-based practice. These subjects are used as a commentary on the history of knowledge preserved within Western societies and institutions, addressing the artist’s own lived experience within South Africa and the country’s colonial past.

Smith’s particular style makes use of a minimalist, yet nuanced approach to working on canvas, in which subtly suggested shapes draw the viewer in, offering the opportunity to connect with the experience of contemplation and discovery. Using stains created first on the back of the canvas, and working over and under them in pencil, ink, charcoal and paint.

Smith, driven by a lifelong fascination with texture, coaxes out seductively composed surfaces. Smith’s own invitation to the viewer is to “slow down, walk your eyes across the surface, stand up close and then step back, and slowly let your mind come to rest, as if you were gazing at a view: everything else should be irrelevant in this moment.”