Life on Venus | The Landscape, Live Auction

"Smith's drawings are a rigorous examination of the world around her and possess an almost dreamlike quality. Theatrical landscapes haunted by love and violence collapse onto the paper as the players act on their wanton impulses. Man, Woman and Beast transgress with the hysteria of a Punch and Judy show, as collaged shapes and cutouts inhabit a world that is at once tender and menacing.

In her paintings, women, derived in part from Margaret Atwood novels, and depictions of the Femme Fatale, dismiss the childhood model of The Fairytale and embrace the chaos that ensues. In doing so she explores manifestations of desire, obsession, and loneliness in an attempt to understand the idea of the ‘happy ending’."