Bethany Smith

Bethany Smith is a Sydney based artist, who blurs the barriers between painting and printmaking. Considering herself as a painter, her practice largely involves using her own body as the brush, applying paint onto her body and imprinting this onto a surface. Through this, Smith aims to explore how the body of the artist can be the subject, author and tool while challenging past representations of the female in painting.

Although this is a focus of Smith’s, her practice also involves experimentation of mediums through drawing, ceramics and traditional forms of printmaking where she looks to the simplicity and beauty surrounding her, allowing it to be about the process and making. Even in this part of Smith’s practice, her painting traits and gestures are embedded within her making.

Smith completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at The University of New South Wales, Art & Design back in 2018. Since then she has been working as an Art Facilitator in the disability sector, in which she supports others in their own creative expression.

#4 | Banksia, 2020, relief print with acrylic on paper. 42 x 30 cm (each). $250 (each)

Banksia series was created during lockdown while Beth was running online art sessions for her work as an art facilitator in the disability sector. Looking to her environment and daily walks, nature and botanicals became an inspiration to both her work and to her own practice, allowing her to pay attention to the beauty surrounding her. The series of prints references to her painting practice through her expressionist strokes and application of paint, instead of ink.