Page 194 - Genius

lionel SMit

lives and works in Cape Town, South-Africa

SEARCH THE ARTIST ONLINE www.lionelsmit.com

Smit’s subject-matter is consistent – portraiture is his
preferred mode and his models are handpicked out
of the tapestry of his daily life. These are not famous
people, or people with extraordinary power within their
communities. The people Smit chooses to paint possess
a particular aesthetic that appeals to his visual sensitivity,
but nothing more in the way of social influence. However,
up-scaled to many times their life size and abstracted
according to Smit’s particular technique, these faces are
imbued with an immense authority that is impossible
to overlook.
The paintings – or, more accurately, the residues of the
artwork – are monumental in scale, standing higher
than the average man and wider than the same man
with arms outstretched. From a distance, the viewer is
struck by the painting as apparition – a larger-than-life
rendition of someone that is almost familiar. Intrigued
by this image, the viewer is drawn forward, closer to
the painting itself, in order to examine the fine details
of the memorable face. It is from this point that the
‘conceptual transcendence’ of the work develops. Close
up it becomes clear that fine detail, in the sense of faithful
realism, is not Smit’s interest by any means. The picture
plane begins to disintegrate. The face is interrupted by
bands of solid color and gestural swathes of paint. The
eye is drawn to drips and splatters produced by the
enterprise of working on such a large scale. Slices of
light and shadow reveal segments of the canvas almost
untouched, other areas are overworked in layers that run
out the edges of the form.
Drawn by degrees into the multifarious dimensions of the
portrait, the painted surface becomes more significant
than the form the artist has chosen to represent. like
the artist, the viewer does not operate completely
automatically. Unlike, for instance, the vast color fields
of rothko, in which the viewer can become lost entirely
in subconscious wanderings, Smit’s paintings retain their
ties the figurative. Hence, the viewer is confronted with
random analytical challenges as s/he is absorbed into the
surface of the work. Smit describes the creation of each
painting as ‘a burst of energy that feels uncontrollable at
first’. Through the access point of the represented face
the audience, although prevented from viewing what
Smit views as the artwork itself, is able nonetheless to
‘participate in the beauty of the body as a landscape of
all human experience.’
Jacqueline Nurse
 resiDUe, 2009 OIl ON CANvAS 67x51 IN. /170x130 CM.
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