Michael Smith (English/French)
160 pages
Published: June 18, 2024
Non-Fiction / Art & Architecture
Hardcover: 9781773104188 $45.00
Published by Goose Lane Editions with Beaverbrook Art Gallery
Montreal-based painter Michael Smith is known for his fluid and impasto surfaces as well as his ability to strike a poetic balance between representation and abstraction. Inspired by art history as well as historic and current events, Smith pulls from various sources to create his energetic landscapes and seascapes. J.M.W. Turner’s The Fountain of Indolence, George Chambers’s depictions of 19th-century Arctic expeditions, and Jean Paul Riopelle’s palette knife abstractions continually shape Smith’s understanding of landscape painting, while historically focused projects push the boundaries of his subject matter.
Published: June 18, 2024
Non-Fiction / Art & Architecture
Hardcover: 9781773104188 $45.00
Published by Goose Lane Editions with Beaverbrook Art Gallery
Montreal-based painter Michael Smith is known for his fluid and impasto surfaces as well as his ability to strike a poetic balance between representation and abstraction. Inspired by art history as well as historic and current events, Smith pulls from various sources to create his energetic landscapes and seascapes. J.M.W. Turner’s The Fountain of Indolence, George Chambers’s depictions of 19th-century Arctic expeditions, and Jean Paul Riopelle’s palette knife abstractions continually shape Smith’s understanding of landscape painting, while historically focused projects push the boundaries of his subject matter.
This major retrospective of Michael Smith’s paintings demonstrates his ability to mix landscape with abstraction, creating fictional spaces that show how experience impacts the way we view the world. Layering landscapes and seascapes, the familiar with the unfamiliar, Smith’s paintings convey (as Smith writes), “a mix of excitement and anxiety of a land, [that] although at times bucolic, is riddled with shadows.”
Accompanying a major exhibition organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Michael Smith: Sea of Change features 50 large-scale reproductions, an essay on Smith’s trajectory as an artist by critic-curator Nancy Tousley, and an interview with the artist by John Leroux.
Michael Smith’s work is included in numerous public collections, including those of le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Rideau Hall, and la Citadelle de Québec.
Accompanying a major exhibition organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Michael Smith: Sea of Change features 50 large-scale reproductions, an essay on Smith’s trajectory as an artist by critic-curator Nancy Tousley, and an interview with the artist by John Leroux.
Michael Smith’s work is included in numerous public collections, including those of le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Rideau Hall, and la Citadelle de Québec.
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Authors
John Leroux, an art historian, teacher, and retired architect, is the manager of collections and exhibitions at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. He has authored or edited seventeen books and contributed to many others. His most recent publications include Peter Powning: A Retrospective and the award-winning Wabanaki Modern: The Artistic Legacy of the 1960s “Micmac Indian Craftsmen,” which he co-authored with Emma Hassencahl-Perley.
Nancy Tousley is a Calgary-based independent art critic, journalist, and curator. She is the author of numerous books, including A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug. She received the Governor General’s Award in Media and the Visual Arts in 2011 for her distinguished contribution to art in Canada.
Nancy Tousley is a Calgary-based independent art critic, journalist, and curator. She is the author of numerous books, including A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings of Levine Flexhaug. She received the Governor General’s Award in Media and the Visual Arts in 2011 for her distinguished contribution to art in Canada.
