This is Me

May 2011

VANS Regional Exhibition McCarthy Hall Gallery, Truro, Nova Scotia

My acrylic paintings for ‘This is Me’ explore subtext and undercurrents, what people reveal and what is just ‘under the skin’. The titles were lines from various poems by Canadian writers.

In choosing images, I want to present a particular point of view. I am not so much interested in producing an accurate likeness, but am more concerned about mood and the emotional energy that makes us all individuals. I am attracted to the careless gesture, the telling glance, the way we hold ourselves, subjects that have something to say and something to hide. I like that ambiguity.

 

‘and you are like the moon seen from the earth, oval and gentle and filled with light’
– Margaret Atwood (from Foretelling the Future)

‘You fit into me like a hook into an eye
A fish hook, an open eye’
– Margaret Atwood (from Power Politics)

‘Your love, a marsh of high grass I got lost in
each step away from the house was a voice that said: don’t’
— Sue Goyette (from A Late Horizon)

‘Doesn’t everything important start with the same impulse?
Your heart in the passenger seat’
— Sue Goyette (from Sacrifice)

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Image © Norene Smiley. All rights reserved.

And you are like the moon

acrylic | 30 x 30 | $800

Image © Norene Smiley. All rights reserved.

You fit into me like a hook

acrylic | 30 x 30 | sold

Image © Norene Smiley. All rights reserved.

Each Step Away from the House

acrylic | 30 x 30 | sold