My role as an artist is to be open, curious, and available to experience beauty and something else. I seek an ambiguous presence in the work that is just below the surface; an otherness that is filled with mystery and enigma.
The artwork is a symbol, a trigger, for the viewer to be moved to a feeling that she innately recognizes, always has known, though cannot define in ordinary terms. She is brought into the artwork, the feeling within, and is moved as though she had forgotten something precious, and is now reminded.
My work is influenced by Asian aesthetics and philosophy. Though I feel there are many complexities inside my imagery, I struggle with the contradiction that comes in paring my work down to the simplest form, as tho a seventeen syllable haiku.
My creative life began as a freelance writer, and commercial & editorial photographer. Now, I have been concentrating on limited-editioned fine-art, and my most extensive body of work is in the still life genre. I also work with the landscape, and the female form. I print my work in black & white and color, using both traditional photographic processes & archival pigment ink on fine cotton printmaking papers. In recent years I have begun a natural flowering of my work using mixed-media.
My work has been exhibited internationally…is in museum, corporate, and private collections in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Japan. I live and work from my studio & home in the forested foothills of the North Cascade Mountains in North-central Washington State – closely surrounded by nature which stimulates my spirit and influences my artwork.
Ken Smith