2021 EXPOSED ARTIST DIRECTORY

Carmen Smith is best known for her intensely colorful paintings of simplified urban architectural scenes around the  greater Miami area. Characteristic of her work is emphasis on light and shadow on colorful forms in the  city, sometimes appearing almost abstract but never fully abandoning representation. Central to her  practice is the belief that structures, like the figure in art, have emotive and intellectual influence. Minimally executed, her paintings offer a departure from the cluttered, ever-evolving urban landscape  of the greater Miami area. Instead, her paintings capture moments and fragments from the urban  landscape that are often observed passively. Her use of familiar settings, designed in a way that invites  the viewer to become part of the scene, suggests how a place becomes part of an experience. An  exaggeratedly bright, almost neon, color palette suggests how we remember or experience places  within an emotional context. The result is a more nuanced consideration of how place affects  experience, memory, and identity.

Smith is a visual artist based in South Florida. She is an Associate Artist at the Bakehouse Art  Complex in Miami. Originally from St. Augustine, FL, she moved to Miami in 2008 after she studied fine art and design in Virginia. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in  Richmond, VA, where she was awarded the Academic and Creative Excellence Award and became  interested in the psychological effects of architecture and design.