Hunting PLC has announced the finalists for their prestigious annual competition, The Hunting Art Prize 2009, which awards $50,000 to one distinguished artist. Included as one of the 134 finalists was T. Smith's oil painting "A Palace and a Prison".The Hunting Art Prize is the most generous annual art prize in the U.S., intended to help the reputations, raise the profiles, and support the careers of distinguished artists. In April, a second panel of jurors will make their decision. On May 2, the prize will be awarded, and the art will be exhibited at a gala held at the Decorative Center in Houston.

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ARTIST STATEMENT
T. Smith


The aim is to see…
That which others don't notice
Reveal it to them

Conceptual art is defined as “art that is intended to convey an idea or concept to the perceiver and need not involve the creation or appreciation of a traditional art object such as a painting or sculpture”. For me, conceptual art is no longer new and furthermore misses its sole purpose for being because no matter what impression is intended there is nothing left behind to nail the concepts to. This is why I choose to work as a painter and also why the statement “a picture is worth a thousand words” will always be true. I believe in taking the strong ideas behind a conceptual piece and assigning them a visual ideogram that acts as a key for understanding the concept. I believe art should have a specific statement to make that is larger than the visual elements but that which can also be distilled down to a tangible symbol.

Governments know this and it’s called propaganda.
Churches know this and it’s called religion.
Corporations know this and it’s called advertising.
Artists know this and it’s called Truth.

The visual physical world is connected in subtle ways that can be easily overlooked. I work from my own photographs to discover the connections between seemingly disparate elements that combine to form a greater reality than their independent parts. I transform actual visual images into a third-generation idea from physical reality to camera to canvas. I am interested in the underlying associations formed by the repetition of shapes and lines from not only material forms but also those of transient matter such as shadows and reflections operating on the same visual plane in a realistic abstraction.

I am interested in conceptual painting with technical facility, beauty and emotion combining abstractive elements within realism. My intent in painting is to strive for fulfillment in every element while providing a strong vehicle to carry a belief through the painting to the viewer while making an aesthetic contribution. I put a great deal of thought and planning into each painting from the original concept to the composition, execution, canvas size and title. I do not work in a series but believe that each painting is autonomous and stands alone as a symbol or “glyph” encoded with multiple interpretations subjective to the particular viewer. The individual paintings come organically one at a time and it is only later that I realize some of them are actually siblings.

The imagery in my work may appear to be surrealistic but it is derived solely from elements actually experienced in a conscious visual state rather than the emphasis placed on the subconscious and automatism that surrealism was founded on. While I am influenced by surrealist juxtapositions, I consider myself a Patternist primarily interested in the affinities of emerging connections when taken as a whole. Patternism is reality viewed as a wave rather than a particle. It is the missing link between normal spatial perception and fractured spatial perception. It is one link removed from normality, yet it is still very evident.