Room to Roam oil on canvas, 70” x 70” by Ed Smith
As a young man just out of high school in Massachusetts, one of the first jobs LSU Professor of Painting and Drawing Ed Smith had was as a crew member on the first vessel of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which uses direct action tactics to disrupt whale and seal hunting activity. “It was an incredible experience,” he said. “We’d sail up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and throw vegetable dye onto white seal pups. “We were arrested and thrown in jail in the Magdalen Islands …”
And although Smith doesn’t chase whalers anymore, his passionate environmentalism has survived his Southern relocation, expressed now in the birds he paints—teeming multitudes huddled together in improbable profusion. Smith explained that his clusters express the pressure that human activity places on wild things. “These clusters represent this idea of piling things on top of each other, to express the symbiotic relationships between things trying to survive,” he said. “[The cluster paintings] really started with Katrina, so I guess in some ways the birds are stand-ins for people in desperate situations, too.”
After moving to Baton Rouge to teach art at LSU in 1999, Smith immersed himself in both the art history of the region, and also in the beautiful, scarred, life-teeming landscapes of South Louisiana. “I don’t photograph birds, but I have a kayak, and I get out and draw,” he noted. “And I have stacks of historical bird books—Audubons, eighteenth-century prints of birds, all kinds of material. Like making a jigsaw, I start by finding an interesting shape, then fit the birds into it. I like the shapes of herons and egrets with their long, beautiful backs. Some birds have characteristics that make them fit. Or not.”
Gorgeous and color-saturated though they are, Smith’s bird clusters nevertheless feel ominous, as if the glorious, interconnected profusion of life is huddled in defense against some malignant force. “I love nature,” Smith said, “and I’ve always thought that it is very important to have a voice. So I paint things that are beautiful to look at but that reveal themselves in a way that makes you question what’s going on. These are not natural things that are occurring. So the birds are desperate, but they’re also hopeful because maybe [Louisiana] is one of the last little corners where they can survive and take hold. Maybe they can be a little canary in the coal mine.”
In Louisiana, Ed Smith has pieces in the collection of the LSU Museum of Art and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He is represented by New Orleans’ Soren Christensen Gallery, where he will present a solo show this fall. See more work at sorengallery.com or edsmithstudio.com.
