Banner artwork: Amanda Smith, Grass Egress, graphite, charcoal, oil and acrylic on rag paper 50" x 109", 2009.
Cropped and reproduced for access+ENGAGE with permission of the artist
About her work, Smith writes: "As a painter, I am particularly interested in the symbiotic relationship between painting and film, 
and find myself continually comparing, juxtaposing, and relating the way the two different media present space. I like the notion that imagery so pervasive and familiar can, through a bit of mediation, become new, strange, and difficult to place. I make paintings that are conscious of the influence of cinematic space — how it dominates the way people perceive, remember, and imagine environments. Rather than working to make direct references to or depict specific films, I use cinematic imagery simply as a point of departure to construct new, but somewhat familiar spaces. I incorporate drawing, painting, and collage practices to recontextualize these cinematic spaces, making edge, surface, material, and mark primary concerns.
"My most recent works in painting utilize cinematic imagery as a source material and catalyst, and consider film to be a collage-like, cartographic process. Films, through a build-up of thousands of still shots, slowly reveal place, space, architecture, and narrative geography. My paintings are constructed around this idea, compressing multiple cinematic spaces into the static space of a painting. The resulting images develop into simultaneous experiences of multiple spaces in a single moment, with a strong visual link to cartography.
"The nature of my process results in images that investigate both representation and abstraction. In some of my paintings large, highly articulated interior spaces will exist next to abstract fragments, while other paintings are completely without recognizable senses of place. Ultimately, I am charting the relationships of spaces and diagramming the emotive atmospheres of film."
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About the artist: Amanda Smith was born in Bremerton, Washington and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, and she holds a bachelor of arts degree in Studio Art from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, an MFA from the University of Nebraska-
Lincoln. She is currently Assistant Professor in Painting and Drawing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions across the United States, including shows at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, the Kirkland Art Center in Washington, and has an upcoming exhibition at the Rochester Art Center this September. Smith was an artist-in-residence at Art 342 in Fort Collins, CO, and was a visiting artist at Temple University in Rome, Italy. You can see more of Smith's work on her website and, of course, at mnartists.org/amanda_smith.
Related exhibitions:
An exhibition of Amanda Smith's work will be on view at Rochester Art Center as part of their 3rd Floor Emerging Artists Series; the show will run from September 25 - January 9, 2011.
Credits: All images courtesy of the artist. Middle right: Dune, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40", 2010. Middle right: Contraband, oil and acrylic on panel, 32" x 48", 2009. Bottom right: Psycho Hair Ball Study, acrylic on rag paper, 22" x 32", 2010.