Willie Wayne Smith
In order to honor his past, his desires, his family, and his artistic impulses Willie Wayne Smith creates highly expressive artworks, metabolizing his thoughts and feelings into conceptual mixed media artwork. Using brushes, spray guns, panels, wood, resin, canvas, sandpaper, oils, and pigments, Smith builds his pieces layer by layer to form a narrative that is dependant on clashing qualities to produce meaningful messages. Smith’s projects employ both refined technique and chance outcomes, seeing his process as akin to poetry. Typically working within the structures and aesthetics of western art, he attempts to act as a free voice commenting on festering materiality, the laborer’s experience, ephemeral moments, and the universal daydream. Smith removes objects from their use-value, instead valuing these items for their potential. By distancing objects from their typical use, Smith is able to reimagine objects within a beautiful and unconventional landscape. He aims to transform perceptions and representations from real, to hyper-real, to impossible, to surreal, and finally to abstract.
Smith has shared his work in solo exhibitions at the Good Weather Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas, Sadie Halie Projects in New York, and CEREALART (project room) in Philadelphia. Additionally he’s contributed artwork to group exhibitions at galleries …
In order to honor his past, his desires, his family, and his artistic impulses Willie Wayne Smith creates highly expressive artworks, metabolizing his thoughts and feelings into conceptual mixed media artwork. Using brushes, spray guns, panels, wood, resin, canvas, sandpaper, oils, and pigments, Smith builds his pieces layer by layer to form a narrative that is dependant on clashing qualities to produce meaningful messages. Smith’s projects employ both refined technique and chance outcomes, seeing his process as akin to poetry. Typically working within the structures and aesthetics of western art, he attempts to act as a free voice commenting on festering materiality, the laborer’s experience, ephemeral moments, and the universal daydream. Smith removes objects from their use-value, instead valuing these items for their potential. By distancing objects from their typical use, Smith is able to reimagine objects within a beautiful and unconventional landscape. He aims to transform perceptions and representations from real, to hyper-real, to impossible, to surreal, and finally to abstract.
Smith has shared his work in solo exhibitions at the Good Weather Gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas, Sadie Halie Projects in New York, and CEREALART (project room) in Philadelphia. Additionally he’s contributed artwork to group exhibitions at galleries such as Storefront Ten Eyck in Brooklyn, Madelyn Jordon Fine Art in Scarsdale, New York, 150 Franklin Street in Brooklyn, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, New York, and School 33 Art Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Smith has been nominated for the Rema Hort Mann NYC Emerging Artist Grant, Joan Mitchell MFA Award and has received awards and grants such as the Director’s Award from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Cranbrook Painting Merit Scholarship, MICA Talent Grant, and Emanuel Herman ‘39 Prize.
