Anthony Smith

Anthony Smith
Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA

STATEMENT

I make artwork that’s filled with rich dense spaces. These spaces coalesce into vibrant worlds where I often play out moral, political, or philosophical fantasies using calligraphic gestures. I often layer and then erase work I’ve spent hours producing simply to capture the ghost of what came before. I tell stories. I tell stories within stories. I tell stories that are not always meant to be perceived by the viewer. These are my secret work. I always leave a morsel that viewers can grab hold of, be it a friendly gesture, appealing color, or familiar image that, like breadcrumbs, I hope leads the viewer on a journey of discovery. I make compositionally dense work as a reflection of the world. At times this density is buried, and a contemplative textured landscape is painted over top of the “noise” as a type of respite. All the work I create ultimately becomes about biography, about figuring out how to fit into assigned boxes while making a space where the plethora of identities I inhabit can thrive. I make my pretty things.

BIO

Anthony Smith received a B.A. in Fine Arts from Amherst College (1999) and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan (2001). He’s shown nationally most recently in the “Might Real/Queer Detroit Exhibit”, Detroit (2022) and in “Telling Our Story” at the David Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park. Smith has also shown in various exhibitions in Pennsylvania, including at the Bethlehem House Gallery in 2016, 2019, and 2022, and in “The New Normal” at Moravian University Payne Gallery (2021). He’s been reviewed in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Detroit Free Press, and the Artist’s Magazine to name a few. Smith has taught at the University of Michigan, Parsons, Princeton, MICA, Lehigh, and Muhlenberg Colleges. He served as artist-in-residence at the National Academy of Design (2006–2008), the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, in 2016 and 2022, and at the Banana Factory Art Center from 2014 to today. Additionally, Smith traveled in January 2023 to Senegal, Africa as part of the CAORC-WARC Faculty Development Seminar. He currently teaches Drawing and Painting at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania with a studio at the Banana Factory in Bethlehem.

ARTIST CONTACT

(610) 533-3110
[click to email]
www.abstractnarrativepainting.com

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