Vicki Smith | You Are The Sky. Everything Else Is Just The Weather.
Vicki Smith | You Are The Sky. Everything Else Is Just Weather.
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
June 5-19, 2021
The motivation and title for the artist's new collection of paintings was inspired by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and principal teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, who wisely stated, 'You are the Sky. Everything Else is Just the Weather.'
The artist states:
This quote helps to remind us that we all have a cloudless and clear sky within us. The daily fluctuations of thoughts, emotions and worries create the weather that can cloud our sky. Engaging with art mindfully is a practice that clears thoughts and brings us back to our cloudless sky with a sustained sense of wellbeing. The more mindful we are the more we realize that the weather is just passing by. The clouds may come and go, but the sky is constant, ‘You are the sky’.
Rendered in finely textured impasto, luminous, jewel-toned palettes, and layers of expressive brushwork, Smith's bathers, afloat in changeable waters, speak to a distinct sense of interiority. Transposed onto her canvases, the sunlit ripples and shaded caustics of Smith's source imagery become the medium through which the artist explores the great heights and depths of feeling.
Vicki Smith's paintings articulate this elemental movement to reveal an underlying quality of stillness fundamental to the artist's practice. With trademark warmth and insight, Smith invites the audience to immerse themselves in the act of viewing and into a state of grace.