CARY SMITH | Homage to Homage | MELANIE’S OFFICE

September 8 - October 11, 2024

VIEW EXHIBITION

During the pandemic, starting in November of 2020, I made paintings with brown grounds. I searched for a particular brown that I could believe in, so I experimented with many mixtures of the color brown. I made the brown paintings for 2 years. In the middle of that period I experimented with an idea that had been percolating for some time, and in April through August of 2021, I made 5 small "Homage to Homage" 16" x 16" oil paintings using 2 of Josef Albers iconic compositions, one using 3 squares, the other using 4. Unlike Albers, most of the colors are mixed. The first of the 5 began with the love for the particular brown I had been using along with a green color that I found quietly exciting in combination. These paintings were as much about intuitive color choices as anything else.

Cary Smith was born in 1955 in Puerto Rico; he lives in Farmington, Connecticut with his wife Nina, and has a studio in nearby Collinsville, Connecticut. He has had one person shows at: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT., Feature Inc., NYC., Fredericks & Freiser, NYC., Derek Eller, NYC., Koury Wingate, NYC., Rubin Spangle, NYC., Julian Pretto, NYC. His work was included in the 1989 Whitney Biennial, as well as numerous other museum group exhibitions. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and a Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant. His work is in the permanent museum collections of: Whitney Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, UCLA Hammer Museum, Harvard Fogg Museum, Sheldon Museum and others.