'A Child Inside'

I met painter Daniel Smith at his "A Child Inside" studio at his Hendersonville home for the first time in November 2007. His artist's statement comments: "Surprising light and shadow, colors that appear from nowhere ... Some seem to have lost their knack for seeing these moments when they happen. By turning the moment or emotion into a painting and hanging it on a wall, I make it very hard to ignore." I am interested in seeing where his vision will take him. His best work causes me to predict that we will see a stunning breakthrough at some time in the future.

Smith turned to full-time painting after 25 years of working as a graphic designer in central Illinois, where he attended high school in Champagne/Urbana. Although his primary design work involved the creation of large signage, his design skill in small formats can be seen in the three-fold brochure for the Gallery Guild that you can pick up at a number of Henderson County galleries.

After visiting a friend in Penland a few years ago and seeing the stimulating art scene in our area, he moved to Hendersonville, taking on freelance design jobs. In early 2008, he decided to paint full time. Since he does not yet have exclusive gallery representation, you have to travel around to see his work. At the present, a few pieces are at the Red Step Gallery, the stimulating new gallery on Third Avenue in Hendersonville. Some of his nude paintings are on display at the Cazbah Restaurant, a tapas bar in Greenville, S.C. The Red Clover Gallery in Landrum, S.C., has displayed his work. He was a featured artist in May at the Appalachian Artisan Gallery in Old Fort and a few paintings are still on display there.

Finally, several of his oil paintings of horses are currently at the Merrimon Gallery in Asheville. At that gallery, they are displayed alongside more traditional horse paintings by Patricia Ramos Alcayaga. Smith's horses outshine the bland, predictable Ramos Alcayaga works. Smith obviously respects horses and has his own vision of them. "My horses are big and in your face," he comments, "I think horses are intimidating because of their size, but they also can be silly."

To see examples of his many moods, consult his Web site, www.achildinside.com, where his online gallery is divided into Horses, Pollinators (bees), Figure (nudes), Light (the interaction of light and human faces), Light 2 (eccentric subjects unified by their dependence upon light) and the recent Caution series.

His weakest works look like student efforts. He should remove from the Web site a few whose quality detracts from the overall impression, because his best works show a striking artistic vision. "The End," an oil painting in the "Caution" series, presents an abstract pattern of light and shadow, metal and rust, orange and yellow, that is in fact a representational painting of the caboose at the Hendersonville train station, but viewed from an oblique overhead perspective that causes us to rethink a familiar object. One painting in the "Light 2" series views from an adult's lofty perspective the legs of a pre-teen boy in mismatched socks, while another member of this series shows a large plastic rooster outlined against a cloudless sky, a utility pole and utility lines.

Daniel Smith explains: "I love bringing to the viewer a seemingly normal moment or object for scrutiny. I think it forces reflection on our own lives."

Ted McIrvine can be reached at McIrvine@aol.com.