Recent works
In John Smith's work the process and subject matter are interdependent. His fluid, mobile technique encourages a free interpretation of emerging and disappearing child-like imagery. While Smith's paintings are not "about" theory, they are theory related.
An over-riding concern is that these works read as a "field" or installation. Another concern is the structural grammar of the field, so that the overall impression is of "handwriting". This linearity becomes the “text" of the painting - as in the triptych Carnival I, II and Ill, 1987.
This type of mark-making allows figurative forms to emerge and retreat through certain levels of consciousness. The artist emphasizes the role of process in his work, but it is a process that has as an essential feature an earthy rawness. As a process painter Smith is involved in flux and transition, a nexus of forces. As images emerge, he cancels them out. He sees this erasure as an inversion of the mark-making procedure and his best work emerges from the "wiping-out" process. This effacing provides a palimpsest, a play of over and underlay, which creates a certain element of confusion underlying the aesthetically pleasing surface.
Smith's subject matter is drawn from the "Carnivalesque" where there is a reversal of norms and erasure of divisions between play and life, horror and humour, animals and humans. In Carnival I, II and Ill, Smith refers to the "politics of transgression" where he gives free play to the grotesque body which is in opposition to social standards of beauty. Smith's figures are grotesque, genderless animals; spider-dogs, human monsters; the laughing crowd which pulls apart the comic monster.
Another element in Smith's work is his personal philosophy of "truth
John Smith, Speed Car Crash, 1987
