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December Issue 2006
Summit One Gallery in Highlands, NC, Features Works by Jane Smithers and Scott Upton
Summit One Gallery in Highlands, NC, is presenting
the exhibit Pushing Paint, featuring new works by Jane
Smithers and Scott Upton, on view through Dec. 31, 2006.
Smithers and Upton are two artists with two different ways of
pushing paint around on the canvas. Smithers uses the palette
knife and thick layers of oil paint to express herself and record
the landscapes of Western North Carolina and her travels to Europe
and South Africa. Upton prefers a print roller and thin layers
upon layers of transparent paint and rough textures to capture
the colors in nature and the highlands.
As a self-taught artist, a world of color and expression has opened Smithers' life to the opportunities for learning and growth. Palette knives, rich textured, brilliant colored oil paints, and the endless possibilities afforded by large canvases have provided the venue for a wonderful adventure.
Watercolor journaling sets the foundation for Smithers' final oils and allows her to capture the essence of spontaneous moments in her life, whether it be traveling in the south of France, Tuscany, South Africa, the coast of Maine or hiking in the mountains of Wyoming and North Carolina. These studies are then transformed into permanent images by boldly building up color and texture in oils with palette knives. Smithers tries to achieve a sense of control amongst the riot of color, to pay attention to compositional elements, to offer a glimpse of something familiar and evoke an emotional response...something to remember and keep with one always.
"Aspects of my personal history are much like some of the impressionists: being self taught and having chosen art relatively late in life," says Smithers. "This new purpose is a journey in itself and the art has become a source of faith and spirituality- an awakening to new levels of consciousness."
"My recent pilgrimage into the world of art has defined my destiny and led me on a circuitous journey. It has transformed my self as well as my circumstance. I have constructed an independent identity- an adventurer by choice! Each change of scenery releases a new creative vision. Each stroke of the palette knife declares my absolute commitment to my art! This is my way of grasping reality and my perpetual quest to know myself," Smithers said.
Smithers says of her newest project, "I have created an art exchange program with a Charter School in North Carolina and the children from the settlement camp of Stanford Hills in South Africa, where I recently conducted an art camp and am working on another trip to benefit the orphanage and Food 4 Thought."
Scott Upton's work is an abstraction of specific events and subject matter gathered from his own life. Using bold color to express himself forcibly, Upton works with complementary colors and vibrations of kindred tones and titles that intermingle with the subject.
"When I begin a painting, I have an idea of what I am going for and I work fast and strong, " said Upton. "As the painting evolves, I pull back and let the direction of the painting determine the outcome. By giving way to the painting, it stays fresh and responsive. New works of mixed media paintings, feature texture, metal leaf along with a process of scaring and tearing away. There is an expression of maturity along with the playfulness and excitement to let things happen."
"In this exhibition, Pushing Paint, at Summit One Gallery, I get the best of both worlds: the real and the abstract. Along with my abstract paintings I get to do a series of wildlife paintings where I use the technique found in my abstract paintings along with realism of the areas wildlife. This series is exclusive to Summit One Gallery," says Upton.
Upton was educated at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the Art Institute of Atlanta. He has won many awards and is included in many private and public collections, including the Knoxville Museum of Art; Northside Hospital, Atlanta GA; The Georgia Dome, Atlanta GA; The Breakers, Palm Beach FL; Chase Manhattan Collection, NY and Chicago IL and others. Upton exhibits extensively throughout the Southeast.
For further information check our NC Commercial
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 828/526-2673 or visit (www.summitonegallery.com).
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