Artist Statement
Artist Statement
"I was struck not only by the resilience and ingenuity of nature, but by its ability to recover after such destructive human intervention."
I don't arrive at a place with a plan. I arrive with my painting kit and open eyes.
I travelled to South Australia and the Eyre Peninsula recently with no expectations — just my sister and the coast and the light. We camped at Coffin Bay and swam every morning in the most pristine water I have ever seen. That kind of clarity does something to you. It slows you down. It makes you pay attention.
It was there that I fell into the story of the local oysters. After years of dredging, the population had simply vanished — nothing left for them to regenerate on. What stopped me was what came next. The razorfish. Each one encrusted with oysters, carrying mussels, pippies, crabs, baby crabs, even baby octopus. A whole little town. A complete ecosystem rebuilding itself on whatever it could find.
It completely blew my mind — not just the power of it, but the ingenuity. The stubborn, extraordinary refusal to disappear. It gave me such hope.
That hope sent me straight to the studio.
For more than twenty years my practice has been built on direct observation — working from life, from place, from the particular light and texture of a specific moment. But the Eyre Peninsula asked something new of me. To sit with the invisible. To paint not just what the eye sees but what the ecosystem quietly holds.
This is what connects all of my work. The portraits ask us to witness the inner life of a person — their resilience, their complexity, their untold story. The marine and landscape works ask exactly the same of the natural world. Both are acts of looking closely. Both are acts of care.
These paintings are not documentation. They are a conversation. An invitation to pay attention — to feel the fragility and the stubborn, astonishing persistence of life.
Dee Smart is represented by Nanda\Hobbs Gallery, Sydney.