Audrey Z Smith

Artist Statement:

My paintings are deeply inspired by nature and my work as a practicing somatic therapist. To me our minds’ neurological processes are as much a part of the natural world as a mountain range or swath of prairie; our inner world also has a topography. 

The visual fields of color, geometric grids, and abstract landscapes that I create are sites where one can experience one’s own emotions, memories, and thoughts, but they aren’t fixed locations. Like waterfalls, there is motion, a constant relocation, activated by the notion of the infinite.

Before I begin painting, I close my eyes and sit with my paints and brushes and the canvas. I let my thoughts drift; images come into my mind and leave my mind. When I open my eyes, I paint what I eventually come to see is a visual approximation of my meditation. 

There is balance in the horizon line, comfort and safety in deep blue circles, peace in a funnel of golden squares, but there is also psychic shifting: growth, yearning, revision. My paintings are events where all of these things converge.

My work has been exhibited in galleries in Colorado, California, Florida, and Utah, and is held in several private collections. I have a BFA in media arts and film from Temple University and a masters in somatic mental health counseling from Prescott College.

RECENT

Home on the Range, The Range, Saguache, CO, August, 2024

Abstraction, Eccles Art Center, Ogden, UT, January 2023

Tantra Paintings, Ogden, UT, July 2022

Pollen Path, Lost Eden Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT February, 2022

Small Works Show, Jag Gallery, Key West, FL April 23-May 20, 2021

Political Discord, Las Lagunas Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA October 2020

Utah Artists & Adobe 9.0, Adobe Campus, Lehi, UT March 2020-August 2020

September 2019, Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow, Two Person Exhibition, Georgia Art Space, Denver, CO

June 2019 Plein Air Show, Eccles Art Center, Ogden, UT

March 2019, Meditation Paintings, Solo Exhibition, The Range Art Gallery, Saguache,CO

November 2018, RITUAL, Littleton Art Museum, Littleton, CO

September 2018, SUSPEND, National Juried Show, Adams State University, Cloyde Snook Gallery, Alamosa, CO

January 2017 BOB MOSS TRIBUTE PROJECT, God Hates Robots Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT

August 2016, Solitude, Group Show, POP Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

June 2015, Sound and Vision, Digital Art Show, Online

February 2014 Art in Residence, Group Show, Salt Lake City, UT

Spring 2011 Tyler School of Art Group Show, Philadelphia, PA

RESIDENCIES

November 2012 Filming the Landscape, Azores, Portugal

Publications:

Westword: Art Attack: Sept. 2019

Slug Mag: RESURRECTING DESERET’S SON: A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE, MUSIC AND ART OF BOB MOSS, 2017

Private Collections:

Cogito Tech, Denver, CO

Guillermo Galindo

Adam Granduciel

Randy Newman

B. Heinze

Brad Overton

Helen Elizabeth Davis

Jason Leiser, Esq.

B. Hartley

Nadia Awais