Review

"Figure Study 1," Mixed Media on Canvas.

Ron Smith

By appointment during business hours.

Kaw Valley Arts & Humanities
756 Armstrong
Kansas City, Kansas
913.371.0024

Hours: Tuesday-Friday, by appointment during business hours.
Runs Through: Feb. 3

Artist's site: http://www.ronsmithart.com
Gallery site: http://www.kvarts.org

Talk about a rush job.

Ron Smith's show of new mixed-media paintings, which wraps up tomorrow at Kaw Valley Arts and Humanities, went from raw material to finished work in a virtual ...

You know what? Smith's explanation needs no embellishment. Here's how the collection came together, in his words:

The most unique thing about this show is that it was produced in thirty days. On December 2, 2009, this entire show (ALL 19 PAINTINGS) was sitting in a pile of lumber, a roll of canvas and tubes or buckets of paint. On January 2, 2010, I delivered this show to Kaw Valley Arts and Humanities, Inc.

(Yes, I know all caps is considered yelling. Nineteen paintings in a month, from scratch? He's allowed.)

There was a point to Smith's creative frenzy, although it wasn't a point of proof.

It is not a demonstration of how much work I can accomplish in one month, Smith writes; I wanted to give the show a breath of freshness.

That he has, in producing a show in which no one can say, "Oh, yeah, I remember seeing this at ..." And while the works are full of Smith's trademark raw energy, there's nothing in them that looks rushed. If you didn't know the whole show had been assembled in 30 days, you wouldn't guess that it had been.

Smith drew the inspiration for many of the pieces (including Figure Study 1, pictured above) from the live model sessions at Red Door Studios. He also drew from Picasso's Rose Period and threw in several previous motifs, among them spiders and floating eyeballs.

I pushed everything through in an assembly line style and let the pieces fall where they are, Smith writes.

They fell well. Throughout this show, Smith has held to his strengths: a bright palette, strong use of contrast and arrangements that pull off the balancing act of being both offbeat (humorously so, in some cases) and just right.

My compositions are usually intuitive, often from dreams, something I might see on the way to my studio or something I am studying, He writes. My main concern is color and balance.

In maintaining that balance at a high rate of speed, Smith makes haste look good.

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