Crater Ponds
MICHAEL GIBSON GALLERY
157 Carling Street London, Ontario, Canada N6A 1H5
Catalogue
Michael Smith Crater Ponds
Essay by John Kissick
Michael Gibson Gallery
October 2010
28 pages, colour illustrations, 8 ¾ x 8 ½ inch softcover
Catalogue of Smith’s third solo exhibition with the Michael Gibson Gallery. Crater Ponds, reference the fertile areas and swamps that Smith discovered as a child growing up in England. The crater ponds were made by the bombs that were discarded in the English landscape during the war. This series continues Smith’s interest in painting a place where both history and the present draws its continual scars and remembrances.
MichaelSmith “Crater Ponds” – October 1 – 30, 2010
MichaelSmith’s newest body of work, Crater Ponds, reference the fertile areas and swamps that Smith discovered as a child growing up in England. The crater ponds were made by the bombs that were discarded in the English landscape during the war. This series continues Smith’s interest in painting a place where both history and the present draws its continual scars and remembrances.
Michael Smith was born in Derby, England in 1951. He has lived in Montréal since 1978. He received a BFA at Falmouth College of Art in England and completed a MFA from Concordia University, Montréal in 1983. Since 1981 his paintings have been exhibited across Canada and internationally including the Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montréal, the Appleton Museum, Ocala, Florida, Galerie Damasquine, Brussels and The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan.
In January 2010 Smith exhibited a suite of powerful 6 ½ x 9 foot paintings in a solo show at the Art Gallery of Peel in Brampton, ON. “Wrestling Vision, Conjuring Place”, curated by James D. Campbell, represented Smith’s first major solo exhibition at an Ontario public gallery in over a decade. Reviews and essays of Smith’s work have appeared in ARTnews, MODERN PAINTERS, Canadian Art and Border Crossings Magazines.
His work was also featured in the Established Artists section of the Magenta Foundation’s 2008 book Carte Blanche v.2 Painting, a survey text on the current state of painting in Canada. The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Beaverbrook Art Gallery and Rideau Hall have Smith’s paintings in their permanent collections.