Image courtesy of the artist.
Beth Smith
Beth Smith is a Sydney based artist who predominantly works in painting while blurring the lines of printmaking. Her practice involves applying paint onto her own body and imprinting this onto a surface, allowing her body to act as the brush. Through this Beth aims to explore how the body of the artist can be the subject, author and tool of a painting process while challenging past representations of the female in painting.
Beth completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at The University of New South Wales, Art & Design in 2018. She is currently working as an Art Facilitator in disability, which she is very passionate about.
Tell us about your creative process. What drives your practice?
My practice is driven by an awareness of the past representations and objectifications of women in painting, which I aim to push up against and battle with. By applying paint onto my own body and imprinting this onto a surface I represent my body with my body, becoming empowered as a female and artist, allowing myself to give the value to my body that I choose. The process shapes and directs my practice. This opens up the ways in which I interact with and explore expanded methods of painting. It is through this embodiment, with myself being the subject, author and tool, that I reinvent and re-organise the conventions of the female in painting today.
You have quite a physical relationship with your work (literally), and your body has developed into a print matrix of sorts within your practice. How do you find the relationship between painting and printmaking when working with the body?
The painting and printmaking are entwined in my practice as the body itself is painted and then printed. Although I identify as a painter and I don’t follow traditional methods of printmaking my practice cannot deny the raw and dependent relationship it has with printmaking. The print process I have adopted helps to shape and direct the painting practice in which I move around the form, allowing my attention to be focused on the ‘how’ rather than the end product.
Are there any female artists that influence you / any female printmakers that influence you?
I know Yves Klein isn’t a female artist but I can’t discus my work without reference to him and his practice and the fact he is NOT a female artist. Although I can say I have been influenced by Klein’s process and forms there is an objectifying nature to his work in which he directs and dictates the models. It is here that I transition away from Klein, as through the use of my body as the model and artist I hold the power without objectifying myself. It is clear in the works I produce that they don’t act as a tribute to him but rather to the field in which I ‘wrestle’ with him, in which I aim to reclaim the ‘body print’ from him.
Finally, what exciting projects are you working on at the moment?
I am super passionate about my job which has lots of exciting projects happening at the moment and I feel fortunate to work each day with other artists. I know this helps to give direction and ground me in my own art practice.
In the current project I am working on, I am experimenting with reinventing previous works by taking them back off the wall and to the floor, reverting them to the original state in how they were created. I am playing around with these works in ‘tile’ form, which allow for an interchangeable and fluid arrangement. I’m sort of coming full circle in this project.
Although my painting practice has been and still is at my core, I’m always interested in expanding out of this into other art mediums. Recently I have started pursuing the form of body through weekly Life Drawing classes at The National Art School. I have only just started the sessions but am already really valuing having the time and focus set aside for this.
