I am very grateful to everyone who has reached out with questions or words of enthusiasm for the work.  As ever, you can reach out yourself by either replying to this email, or emailing me at David@DavidOSmithArtist.com

Perhaps it’s a good time to also acknowledge that the work I’m making now did not come to be in a vacuum, but is one of many outcomes and opportunities I owe to the grace and generosity of others - parents, teachers, mentors, fellow artists, coaches, and more than a few chance-encountered strangers, people who through simple conversation and curiosity are now a part of the work.

Forgive me, but I thought I’d share an “artist’s statement”, a working document that I am frequently required to produce when applying to grants, residences, or juried exhibitions.

This statement, specifically, speaks to my work in plein air.  Painting “en plein air” means, in the strict sense, painting outside, directly from life, without doing work in the studio.  The French impressionists and many other brilliant painters were famous for this method, including my personal artistic hero, John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925), whose plein air watercolors of Venice were on display at the Seattle Art Museum in 2001.  I was fifteen seeing those works, in the flesh, for the first time.  I’d never heard of Sargent, and up to that point, I'd had no what was possible with watercolor.  To this day, I have yet to discover any other artist who can make the kind of watercolor work Sargent did.

Artist’s Statement:

A skillful handmade image is reassuring and empathic, whether a Paleolithic equestrian cave painting or a Sargent watercolor landscape.  Such images validate nature's realities, reinforcing our capacity to behold and understand.

Each plein air watercolor painting is a performance, in real time, a reflection of a collection of observations and a living document of my presence and attention in the field.  My work is honest, and challenging to make.  Through iteration, I attempt to retrieve the effects of natural light in watercolor at a large scale, over and over.  I seldom make revisions or changes in the studio - the marks seen are the marks made.  This process can communicate an experience to the audience, a specific time, place, and light, a gateway to memories and shared realities.

I am drawn to scenes that are difficult to see, such as moving water, the glare of the sun, elusive morning and evening atmospheres, live wildlife.  Always learning, I am practitioner and student.

Cheers,

David