Michael Smith: Sea of Change Mer Mouvante

Montreal-based painter Michael Smith is known for his fluid and impasto surfaces as well as his ability to strike a poetic balance between representation and abstraction. Inspired by art history as well as historic and current events, Smith pulls from various sources to create his energetic landscapes and seascapes. J.M.W. Turner's The Fountain of Indolence, George Chambers's depictions of 19th-century Arctic expeditions, and Jean Paul Riopelle's palette knife abstractions continually shape Smith's understanding of landscape painting, while historically focused projects push the boundaries of his subject matter.

This major retrospective of Michael Smith's paintings demonstrates his ability to mix landscape with abstraction, creating fictional spaces that show how experience impacts the way we view the world. Layering landscapes and seascapes, the familiar with the unfamiliar, Smith's paintings convey (as Smith writes), "a mix of excitement and anxiety of a land, [that] although at times bucolic, is riddled with shadows."

Accompanying a major exhibition organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Michael Smith: Sea of Change features 50 large-scale reproductions, an essay on Smith's trajectory as an artist by critic-curator Nancy Tousley, and an interview with the artist by John Leroux.

Michael Smith's work is included in numerous public collections, including those of le Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Rideau Hall, and la Citadelle de Québec.