![]() ![]() I started to think about what in my painting was extraneous. Smith attributes this change in part to his black belt in karate: "My teacher said there are no extraneous moves in karate-they all mean something. The surfaces and pileups of imagery have, however, become less dense, more succinct-like haiku, he says. If anything, his palette has become more muted, with whites and off-whites mimicking drawing paper. "The work really comes from inside, so it doesn't matter what's going on around me," he says. "It had a little to do with growing up and having my father talk to people I couldn't see." Contrary to what some friends predicted, painting in Miami, where he now spends half his time, did not turn his canvases into riots of color. In his new exhibition, which opens November?7 at Jason McCoy Gallery in New York, "there are ghostlike images, like memories," says Smith. "I think of the paintings not as paintings but as drawings," he says. ![]() Smiths memoir, WALKING THROUGH WALLS, published. As interior decorator to Miamis rich and famous, Lew Smith. They function as both an image-reference back to the paintings and as photographic work in and of themselves. It's a method he developed after he became enthralled with hieroglyphics during six months in Egypt in 1984. In his debut memoir, former GQ managing editor Smith pays underwhelming homage to his father. Before it's had a chance to dry, he scratches into it as if engraving. ![]() "I slather it on like cake batter," he says. ![]() Smith spends weeks preparing his canvases with a mix of oil paint, oils, and waxes. ![]()
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