Press / Artist Interviews

CANVAS REBEL - February 2024
MEET SAMANTHA KEELY SMITH

“Ultimately I strive to create work that explores our common humanity by delving deeply into my own personal experiences and placing those within the context of universal issues. My experiences of loss and grief and illness, and times of joy and happiness and satisfaction, are set amongst feelings of anxiety in the constantly changing world around us. I think for many of us, these life altering experiences are sometimes more clearly seen, or understood, in our unconscious or dream life, because to face them in our day to day lives is very difficult. Painting about that place, where dreams and reality overlap momentarily, means that I have the chance to explore these feelings and make them into images that I hope communicate what is most essential about them, and therefore there will be a chance for them to resonate with people who recognize those feelings and thoughts, even though they come to them translated through my particular visual language.”

MY MODERN MET - July 2023
EXPRESSIVE ABSTRACT PAINTINGS DEPICT THE TURBULENT LANDSCAPE OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE
By Margherita Cole

“These abstract paintings resemble stormy oceans and turbulent skies, sometimes inhabited by enigmatic figures who sink into the pathways of the brush strokes. Rather than depicting the places we see, Smith is portraying our internal landscape—where consciousness and unconsciousness meet.”

COLOSSAL - April 2023
FIGURES FLOW ALONG SWIRLING STREAMS OF COLOR IN SAMANTHA KEELY SMITH’S VIBRANT ABSTRACT LANDSCAPES
by Kate Mothes

“…Smith now incorporates figures in her works. As an extension of her ongoing series Imagined Landscapes, she explores themes relating to presence and the subconscious in the form of bodies floating along a current that appear partially submerged. “Like a radio station coming in and out of tune, they exist as much in our reality as they do in that ‘other’ world,” she says, sharing that the addition of figures in her pieces tapped into her own and loved ones’ health challenges.

BEAUTIFUL SAVAGE MAGAZINE, 2018 - Interview with Samantha Keely Smith by Paul Bekavac

“They’re about basic, very basic, human emotions and tendencies, and hopes and fears.”

ARTIST INTERVIEW with Samantha Keely Smith
by Ana Finel Honigman, PhD, October 2017

”Smith’s timelessly beautiful paintings now have prophetic significance.  She has been painting her fictional landscapes long before environmental crisis became an omnipresent fear and repeated reality, but her paintings’ emotion, imagery and energy increasingly represents our tormented relationship with nature.

COLOSSAL, February 2016

Artist Samantha Keely Smith Explores Powerful Collisions of Dark and Light In Her Abstract Elemental Paintings - by Christopher Jobson

     "Ocean waves crash atop foreboding bodies of water, plumes of fire seem to battle clouds in the sky, and swirling storms shield distant secrets just over the horizon. Smith refers to her paintings as ‘internal landscapes,’ part of an ongoing examination of an externalized inner conflict."

POETS ARTISTS MAGAZINE, November 2015 - Devotion - curated by Daniel Maidman

     "This collection...represents a cross-section of art being made today which excites me and which I love..."

ISO 50 - October 2015 - Artist Update: Samantha Keely Smith - an interview by Tim Navis

     "The images in the paintings are what I call "inner worlds" because they are the result of attempting to translate an internal existence driven by emotion/instinct into something that makes some sense of the reality we live in."

LIAR, Premiere Issue Winter 2015 - The Sea Inside - an Interview by Christine Be

     "strange and terrible...and yet beautiful. I can't really explain where these images come from."

EVIL TENDER - January 2015 - A Brief Look: The Paintings of Samantha Keely Smith - by Chris Jalufka

     "Her focus is on something else, something outside of the real world of office buildings, politics, and the people who move it all about. She's after the unknown."

CONSCIOUS LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE, Winter 2014 - Between Dream & Reality - by Justin Faerman

     "Her paintings conjure an undeniably visceral reaction in the viewer - Smith somehow manages to translate raw emotion into physical form..."

COLOSSAL, April 2014 - Internal Landscapes: Sweeping Abstract Oceans by Samantha Keely Smith

by Christopher Jobson

     "artist Samantha Keely Smith paints abstract oceanic landscapes that are at once menacing and serene, a clash of light and color that she refers to as "internal landscapes" "

MY MODERN MET, April 2014 - Gorgeous Abstract Paintings of Oceanic Internal Landscapes - by Jenny Zhang

     "Smith builds up multiple translucent layers of color, alternating between soft brushstrokes and large, sweeping gestures to evoke crashing waves, surging tides, and stormy floods."

YAHOO! News - Art Pick of the Week - Samantha Keely Smith - April 30, 2014

     "In using wave-like forms to depict the interior world, Smith touches upon associations between psychology, the study of the human psyche, and Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of the sea."

NEVERLAZY MAGAZINE, Autumn 2013 - Samantha Keely Smith - Internal Landscapes

     "Smith paints expressive emotional and psychological landscapes ridden with power, hostility and beauty.  Yet there is also a certain fragility to the abstract scenes she creates, as they appear to evoke unstable, tormented feelings as well as echo the symbolic destruction of the human soul."

INSTALLATION MAGAZINE, Issue 13, Summer 2013 - Dreams of Light - by A. Moret

     "Guided by a stream of imagery derived from memory and dreams, the sprawling landscape paintings of Samantha Keely Smith are illuminated from the inside out.  Painting with oil that is infused with light, she captures a feeling that transcends physicality and psychology and celebrates the journey of discovery and exploration.

Video Interview: Culture Catch - The Dusty Wright Show - August 2011

     Filmed at Samantha's show at Gavin Spanierman Gallery

WHITEWALL MAGAZINE - June 2009 - New Artist: Samantha Keely Smith - by Ana Finel Honigman

     "Seen in the flesh, her canvases are enriched by the tactile information she creates through juxtaposed brushwork styles. Sections of her paintings have the light, creamy quality of Fragonard's fluffy clouds, and other areas have an atmospheric intensity akin to that of Frederic Edwin Church's "Twilight" landscapes."