Mark Elliott Smith
Mark Elliott Smith is interested in creating work which brings something new to abstraction, which holds an abstract complexity, yet each painting binds and expresses an individual identity which can communicate directly with the veiwer with a personal resonance.
In his work he explores the realms of suggestive, enigmatic apparitions, seeing thoughts and ideas as patterns which interact to define the optimum image in new shapes and configurations.
His large abstract canvases are worked in pure colours with hard edged, often cartoolike forms with playful and energetic elements. Paint is laid on flat with a brush to a smooth crisp finish, while a dynamic illusion of three dimensions is created through the placement of form and colour.
Through altering and dramatising the scale of his preparatory, often very small drawings, and representing chance actions in a controlled and deliberate way, the process of painting reveals and amplifies previously hidden information, both visual and psycological, and hints at some kind of narrative beyond the veiwer's conscious grasp.
What is sought, in this interaction between the abstract and the surreal, is a combination of spontaneity and control: a chaotic precision that extracts and re-presents the lost and found on an epic scale. Likewise, the titles of his paintings, though they parallel rather than describe the work, are precise and are chosen to function as micro-poems analogous to the images as they emerge and are defined.
