Cary Smith

Over the course of a career spanning twenty-five years, painter Cary Smith has explored notions of abstraction through his vivid and playfully amorphous paintings. The structures that Smith creates are matched with what he calls “perfectly tuned, heightened color chords,” brilliant, hand-painted pigments that exemplify his method of careful obsession and tireless application.

This tension between the visual narrative of the paintings and their often poignant, poetic, and sometimes invasive titles such as Mind Games (2005) and Up Against Sublime Fears (2006) add another layer of depth to the work. While not all Smith’s paintings are psychological, even the seemingly straightforward works of geometric fancy still possess an intentionality and intelligence, which has come to define Smith’s process over the last two and a half decades.

Cary Smith has had solo exhibitions at various New York City galleries and at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. His paintings have been shown in group exhibitions at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI, New Britain Museum, New Britain, CT and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.