REACH for the SKY
Krista Louise Smith’s cloudscapes are ethereal and layered.
THE ARTIST: Krista Louise Smith is a Brooklyn-based artist originally from Ontario. She’s been painting and drawing for years but, a few years ago, an inflamed nerve in her right arm completely changed her oeuvre. While she once painted highly realistic and figurative paintings, she has since started painting with her left hand and has a much looser brushstroke and palette. Her latest work captures subconscious desires existing outside of our physical reality.
Krista is inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe and Agnes Martin, which comes through in her treatment of colour, as well as James Turrell and Doug Wheeler for their work with light. Knowing these sources of inspiration, her use of paint to render light almost becomes the subject itself.
THE WORKS: Krista’s last exhibition, entitled Sonnets of the Subconscious, took place at Carvalho Park, a gallery in Brooklyn. The work is based on cloudscapes that seem to exist in a world of cottoncandy dreams. “I spend a lot of time looking up at the sky, but the shapes come from somewhere inside,” says Krista. “They seem to be somewhat specific to me and less specific in nature.” There’s an ethereal quality to these pieces that is both steeped in reality (or figuration at least) and completely otherworldly. Krista wants these canvases to be a form of escapism for the viewer, and in this she succeeds.
Each work’s palette is carefully thought out before she begins to paint but, beyond that, she
allows her hand to work, freely painting the scene as it feels natural. She uses a variety of mediums in her works, which gives them a layered and thoughtful finish. “The work is preplanned to the extent of having established the overall composition and colour,” says Krista, “but once I’m into the painting process, anything can happen because I keep my mediums — both acrylic and, later, oils — open by using water or spirits. Things start to mingle with gravity, and the thinness or thickness of the paint becomes trickier to control, which I like. I see where the paint takes me; it’s a balance of control and letting the paint do what it’s going to do.”
Tangerine Sky is a large-scale diptych (it’s more than 11 feet wide!) that continues to play on the same themes. What I love about this painting, and many of Krista’s paintings, is how she crops the subject of the sky. She paints the clouds as though you’re looking right at them on their level rather than from below, creating a feeling that you’re floating and living amongst them. The scale of this painting further heightens the notion of transcending to another world.
While I was first drawn to these large-scale paintings, Krista also paints smaller cloud works that are just as impactful. Last summer, she created a series of small pieces, each 16 by 20 inches, called Blue Summer. What interests me is how she can take the same subject and rework it in so many different ways by changing the colour and composition. Each painting takes on its own identity, much like the sky every day. Ranging from pale pinks to intense blues, these canvases create a sense of calm reiterated through the repetition of her subject. No two paintings are alike, and the endless possibilities of the subject matter fascinate me.
Blue Dream has an intensity to it through Krista’s use of darker tones — especially in contrast to many of the other canvases.
In this particular painting, the treatment of the clouds is clear and concise, and I love the brushstrokes encircling the clouds at the top left. Here, there’s a lighter application of paint, and more left to the imagination.
Violet Eclipse comprises seven canvases, with subtle changes between each one representing shifting times of day. The series starts with a paler pink, then intensifies to a brighter hue, then fades out again. This crescendo effect plays with light, colour and signifies the passage of time, which is a lot to accomplish given the minimal style Krista is working within. Here, the sky looks completely hazy, and you see only a hint of the moon. Without knowing her other work, you could mistake this for being an utterly abstract painting. It’s her ability to float between these two worlds of art — representational and abstract — that continues to draw me in. COLLECTING: Krista Louise Smith has a BFA from OCAD University in Toronto and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. She has done many residencies in NYC and Leipzig, Germany. She’s received three grants from The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation in Montreal, and has also been awarded the Ruth Katzman Prize. Krista’s works start at $3,025.