September 2015
Smithfield Sugar Mill Oil on board 12” x 20” by Melissa Smith
“I fell for the lush, flat landscapes of South Louisiana and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, for marsh and fields, bays and bayous, when I moved to New Orleans after college,” writes Melissa Smith. “There was more sky in the landscape than I ever saw growing up in the hills of North Carolina or at college in western Massachusetts. The vastness of sky over the landscape opened up a spiritual dimension. I’ve never lost that feeling.”
Painting en plein air (“I really HATE to work inside”), Smith sets up a French easel and paints beneath the shade of an umbrella or the tailgate of her SUV, returning again and again at the same time of day. In the fall of 2011 she set up across a dirt road from this sentinel of the West Baton Rouge Parish sugar industry. “It was completed onsite, over the course of maybe twenty afternoons, during a two-hour stretch of late daylight.” “I’ve always been drawn to old work buildings,” writes Smith. “They speak to the connection between humans and the landscape, as well as to the passage of time, two topics that inspire me.”
Through September 20, Smith has paintings in the “Louisiana Contemporary” exhibit at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. See more at melissasmithlandscapes.com and in the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities book about Louisiana art, A Unique Slant of Light. She has painted many private views over the years and welcomes inquiries.