The Smarts about Jeffrey Smart

Ok ... so jeffrey smart was on Talking heads last night. They showed a clip of him at a retrospective that they held at the Art Gallery of NSW ... and guess what he was doing??? He was touching up his paintings that were already hung!!! Outrageous ... bless his little artsy muthafuckin soul! I Love it!!!

You know how, quite pointlessly, people always talk about what they would do if they won tattslotto (I know, I know its a completely futile exercise - except for maybe that 30 yer old who scored his 50 million dollar win in Reservoir), well one of things I would do is buy art ... and Jeffrey Smart is on the list along with Peter Booth, Bill Henson, Del Kathryn Barton etc...

 

 

I remember seeing my very first Jeffrey Smart at the Arts Centre Foyer ... M has a print of this - a whole row of brightly coloured freight compartments of a train. I hope he's taking care of it ... its a limited edition!!

 

I love the fact that he sees mudane industrial landscapes as things of aesthetic beauty, he imbues these cityscapes with an incredibly strong sense of colour with a nod to both naive painting and surrealism.

 

 

Anyways ... twill remain a pipe dream .... maybe one day ....  But for now, there's always the art galleries ... and for the most part they're free.