Our class trip to meet Tom Smith and see his artwork was in my opinion the most engaging and exhilarating trip yet.  Being able to first absorb the brightly colored paintings and then being able to get explanations and insight from Tom Smith, himself was what made this trip a unique experience.  The first thing I noticed when walking in was the digital style of many aspects of the paintings.  It was almost like from far you could be led to believe it was digital art even though it wasn’t. This effect was especially seen with the perfectly straight and equal cuts of paper in the straight-line patterns in some of the paintings.

Although Smith places such importance on technology, as in his video-art and his paintings that look digital, we can’t be fooled to forget that Smith’s main focus is on the physical beauties of different parts of the world, and that’s where he  gets inspiration to create his art.  The painting that resonated the most with me was the painting that seemed to look like a map with red water and green, elevated land.  When I asked Smith about that piece, he said that his trip to Iceland gave him the inspiration.  Iceland has many volcanoes with molten rock and lava, which is depicted as the orange lava in the painting, and this creates the thick moss, or the elevated green wooden pieces.  This seemed very unique to me, because it was not a 3D sculpture, but it was also not just a painting.  It was a hybrid of the two.

After hearing from Tom Smith, I learned some things about the paintings that interested me.  Firstly, how he doesn’t “predetermine the art.” Instead, “it’s exploring and going from there.” He allows the flow of the art take him to the completion of the piece.  This struck me as a different approach than what I thought was the conventional way of creating art.  Another interesting aspect of the art was how he implemented colors of light, which when mixed create a vibrant white color, as opposed to when physical colors are combined, they create a darker brownish color.  I was definitely cultured and enlightened after the visit!