Vicki Smith | Larger Than Life
November 2 - 14, 2024
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday November 2, 2-4pm
Bau-Xi Vancouver presents Larger Than Life, the highly anticipated solo exhibition from Toronto based artist Vicki Smith. Continuing with her years-long fascination with depicting female swimmers in intimate pool and lake settings, Smith gains inspiration from more expansive natural surroundings, placing her swimmers amongst rockier shores with more distant horizons. Smith's own meditation practice informs the energy of each image, imbuing the swimmers with a serene power and a gentle ease of thought and movement. Each image features the artist's adept skill with the brush in capturing the look and movement of water.
Artist statement:
My adult life has been spent in a dense urban centre where nature presented itself in small ways: a front yard garden, a grassy boulevard, a city park, trees lining a busy street. The view was myopic. An occasional foray out of the city to a cottage or a drive in the country seemed pleasant but disconnected and slightly surreal.
That changed last year when I set up a studio beside a great body of water. I suddenly have a horizon line and an expansive sky. This vast new perspective is inviting its ever-changing colours and reflected light into my paintings, allowing my swimmers to engage in a respectful exchange with nature.
-Vicki Smith, 2024
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