Jayne Smith - Artist Statement  

 

 

 

The transient world in which we live bombards us with unfiltered imagery and information, overloading and blocking the channels that allow our thoughts and feelings to find expression. My paintings are about the search for the space in which to find meaning and a primitive need to connect once more with an environment that will feed our ‘inner core’. 

 

My work sets out explore the loss of utopia and failure of modernism to connect with the human condition. Through space and displaced characters, and their juxtaposition with monumental architectural structures, these works aim to mirror the emotional turmoil and unbalance we experience in the midst of a constrained yet chaotic commercial culture. They explore our relationship to a world that has become increasingly alien and skewed, and one in which expression and emotional freedom has become almost impossible to access. 

 

My latest paintings source imagery from photos, the media and old paintings/drawings, anchoring fiction with layers of reality to reflect a world beneath a world we know. In apocalyptic dreamscapes, colonized by the architectural fabrications of a futuristic world, I describe the search for reconnection - both with a turbulent world in a constant flux, and with ourselves - and attempt to deconstruct the barriers and constraints that modernism has imposed on our ability to do so.