Ornaminimalism  writing + art by LAUREL SMITH 
 

Smith was born and raised in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Her appreciation of environment is reflected in her abstract paintings that highlight the connection of art's materiality and its surround.  "Sedimentology" series is a deconstruction of the cycle of painting. Smith gathers paint sludge remains from artists' clean up jars and pours them onto complex shaped canvases. Surface and structure provide a new ground for paint to be presented.

Paintings such as "Critical Distance" are void of imagery on the front surface and color is applied instead to the underlying bevelled edge of the frame. Colored auras deflect onto the wall making the symbiotic relationship between the painting and its surround visible. 

Works in the series titled "LS is more" reduce the artist's initials as a play on the phrase "less is more" frequently used by architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe that was later appropriated by conceptual artist Les Levine in his 'Les is more." Smith's exquisitely crafted surfaces of over twenty glazes of paint are applied to plexiglas. The transparency of the works are remiscent of early Venetian glass. Along the edge of the paintings reflected color casts onto the wall, making Smith's painting surfaces appear to float as if they are lit from behind.